Many of us have grand career goals. We’d love to get a promotion at work by a certain timeframe. Others would love to get a particular kind of job right after graduating from university. For others, establishing their own businesses is their goal.

It’s really easy to dream big, but without a proper plan for execution, those big career dreams may never materialize.

Here are a few tips to help you create and execute career goals every month.

• Make a ‘Vision Board’: Before formulating a plan to execute your career goals, you must first have an overall vision of the direction in which you are planning to go. And a ‘Vision Board’ helps in defining this vision. A Vision Boardis ‘a tool used to help clarify, concentrate and maintain focus on a specific life goal. Literally, a vision board is any sort of board on which you display images that represent whatever you want to be, do or have in your life.’ On your Vision Board, you can have pictorial representations of the career goals you wish to accomplish every month. This enables you keep the bigger picture in mind, as you create your specific goals.
• Break down your goals into small tasks: To accomplish your goals, at the beginning of every month, put together a ‘to do’ list of those little tasks you will need to engage in to accomplish your goals for the month. For instance, someone’s goal may be to use social media as a means of establishing themselves as a thought leader in a given field. Let’s give the example of a food enthusiast who is an aspiring chef. This goal of social media prominence can be accomplished by setting targets, and carrying out the following small tasks within a given month to reach those targets. For example:

Goal for the month: To conduct cooking demos to be recorded and published on Youtube and Facebook for a weekly Vlog series. Short clips of the video will be uploaded to Instagram and Twitter.

How do we go about making the vlog series a reality?

1. Set a budget for filming the cooking demos and research cameramen/good, affordable film crews
2. Schedule filming dates in advance. For instance, the four vlog episodes can be shot in one day to save money, and to ensure that the videos can be edited in a timely manner in order to meet the target of having one vlog released per week

By breaking down goals into small tasks in this manner, you will find that the big picture of your goals for the month will be accomplished efficiently.

• Self-assessment: In order to do a better job of accomplishing your career goals at the beginning of every month, it is imperative to assess your performance from the previous months. Ask yourself these honest questions, and give yourself honest answers. What were the things I did right that had great results? What are some things I could have done better? Overall, what are some detrimental habits I need to get rid of in order to be successful? (E.g procrastination, poor planning, etc). What steps can I take to do better this month?

You may choose to conduct this personal Q & A session by writing in your journal. This is a great idea, as you can always go back to review your progress, based on responses accumulated over time.

In a nutshell, you can successfully create and execute your monthly career goals by keeping the big picture in mind, breaking down your goals into small tasks, and honest self-assessment.

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