Walton Search Blog

If you are like the millions of people this year who have made career resolutions or set goals for yourself you might be beginning to plan out how you are going to accomplish those goals. The reason most goals fail is lack of planning. Sometimes it may be that the end result may seem so distant or it might just be so overwhelming you might not know how to take the first step.

In setting goals we often see things in a systematic approach of starting with a goal in mind then systematically setting how to achieve those goals from step 1 to step 2 and so on. Sometimes that proves to be very difficult.

If you get stuck in the planning process try not to think of your goal setting process in a linear fashion but fill in the blanks as you have them. You might even start backwards. In other words, what would you have had to do to reach your final goal? Fill those in. For each of those items what would you have to do to get those done and so on.

Try brainstorming your thoughts on paper or even as they come to you. One of my college friends was an excellent typist and I’d pay her a small fee to type my papers. What she found amusing was the format I gave the papers to her. I would carry around index cards and write down thoughts or paragraphs as I did research. As with goal planning they weren’t done in a straight line but once I took all of my thoughts or index cards in this case and put them in order I ended up with my goal, a completed term paper.

So next time you get stuck in your goal planning think outside of the box. Your first step is done; you’ve set a goal for yourself. No one will ask you in the end how you got there.

“Sometimes the path you’re on is not as important as the direction you’re heading.”                                                                                                                           ~Kevin Smith

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010, 4:58 pm   |   Career Planning  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback