Long term goal for achievers

career choices

In 1979, Har­vard Busi­ness School con­duct­ed a sur­vey on goals. Eighty-three per­cent of respon­dents did not set any long term goal; 14 per­cent said they had but did not write them. About 3 per­cent said they had goals writ­ten down. Ten years lat­er, those with goals were ten times as suc­cess­ful as those who did not. Fur­ther­more, those who estab­lished writ­ten goals were three times as suc­cess­ful as those with unwrit­ten goals (3% vs 14%).

A career goal is a well-defined state­ment that details mile­stones or achieve­ments we aspire to make. Short-term and long-term goals are essen­tial for suc­cess any­where. The dif­fer­ence is the lev­el of flex­i­bil­i­ty to change. Short-term goals are eas­i­ly changed based on con­tin­gen­cies, but long-term goals are a destination.

 You may desire to work as a senior prod­uct man­ag­er in one of the biggest IT firms in the world. You may also have the long-term goal of set­ting up a start­up com­pa­ny that devel­ops unique prod­ucts in the fin­tech or health space.

There­fore, you should ask ques­tions like, why do I need to set long-term goals, what kinds of pro­tract­ed objec­tives are appro­pri­ate in the IT indus­try, what are the exam­ples, and how to set them?

Importance of your long term goal in the tech industry 

2person hifi for achiving goal

HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin said, “The future belongs to those who can imag­ine it, design it, and exe­cute it.” It takes more than mere day­dream­ing to bring it to fruition. It requires ded­i­ca­tion, ongo­ing work, time, and metic­u­lous planning.

Long-term objec­tives are set for the future. They are accom­plished imme­di­ate­ly. For exam­ple, the career path for a DevOps man­ag­er starts with learn­ing the basics of pro­gram­ming or script­ing lan­guages and the Lin­ux oper­at­ing sys­tem. The next mile­stone is learn­ing source code man­age­ment for the orga­ni­za­tion of projects. After­ward, the stu­dent learns appli­ca­tion and infra­struc­ture build­ing, automa­tion, test­ing, and deploy­ment. These short-term steps or mile­stones sum up to a full-fledged DevOps engineer.

To attain your long-term objec­tives, focus on a step-by-step process to achiev­ing them.

The tech space is like a ‘mul­ti­verse.’ You must cre­ate con­crete, quan­tifi­able, reach­able, sub­stan­tial, and time-bound goals if you do not want to appear as a feath­er in the wind. Visu­al­iz­ing your tech path can help you adjust your goals to meet your spe­cif­ic needs.

Establishing SMART goals 

SMART sig­ni­fies a key to accom­plish­ing a log­i­cal aim. While SMART goals stand as the lifeblood for employ­ers, an aver­age techie may ben­e­fit from learn­ing the process of set­ting them for prac­ti­cal­ly every aspect of their lives.

The let­ter S is for ‘Spe­cif­ic.’ This refers to your defined tar­get. Your long-term goals must be well-defined. Indeed, mere­ly aspir­ing to be in the tech space is not spe­cif­ic enough. To define the speci­fici­ty of a goal, you have to elim­i­nate vague­ness and ambiguity.

M rep­re­sents ‘Mea­sur­able.’ This rais­es ques­tions like, “How will the goal be mea­sured?” “What con­crete evi­dence would be employed to judge whether or not that aim has been achieved?” The mea­sur­a­bil­i­ty of a goal is the term that judges its accom­plish­ment. IT answers the ques­tion, “By what stan­dards do we assess the accom­plish­ment of these goals?”

A means ‘Attain­able.’ Is it pos­si­ble to attain the goal? Set­ting a dif­fi­cult goal is admirable. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the prob­lem is many peo­ple set unat­tain­able goals. Your imag­i­na­tion holds the key to pos­si­bil­i­ties, and the thoughts of the impos­si­ble reside here. How­ev­er, if the goals are gross­ly exag­ger­at­ed, one’s efforts may mere­ly build cas­tles in the air.

Fur­ther­more, the let­ter R denotes ‘Rel­e­vant.’ Your objec­tive must cor­re­spond with your ideals. Your goals should align with your career path. Your goals should be vis­i­ble a few steps ahead of you. Set­ting goals that do not align with your skills may not be con­sis­tent with your career development.

Last­ly, the let­ter T con­notes ‘Time-based.’ When do you antic­i­pate accom­plish­ing your goal? Set a time­line to attain your long-term goal. After you’ve con­sid­ered every­thing, break it down into mile­stones. Again, don’t for­get to write down your objectives.

What your long term goal can look like 

Hav­ing unre­al­is­tic goals can set you up for dis­ap­point­ment. You should set real­is­tic ones. Set tar­gets that add up to your ulti­mate goal. They make it look easy. For exam­ple, you may want to:
  • Achieve a pro­mo­tion or raise in your organization
  • Har­ness new skills to attain big­ger roles
  • Obtain an award/prize at your workplace
  • Self-improve­ment
  • Become a train­er or men­tor for others
  • Launch­ing a prod­uct or service

Write down your goals, and share with like minds. Also, visu­al­ize your suc­cess because “impos­si­ble is nothing.”

Last­ly, the tech career may need a lit­tle boost from experts to help guide you in set­ting long-term career goals. Our exec­u­tive coach­ing ser­vice at Elite careers pro­vides you with a one-on-one career coun­selling ses­sion with our experts. You can book a con­sul­ta­tion with us today. 

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