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How to define and revisit your career goals

Learn how to define and revisit your career goals, align them with your life objectives, and create a fulfilling professional journey that optimizes for happiness and personal growth.

Sebastien Dubois

Nov 13, 2024 — 32 min read

You are always at a crossroads. Each day is an opportunity to choose a new path

Career design is a thing, and you should care. We spend a ton of time working, so we should carefully choose our career goals. Moreover, those need to align with our needs, values, and principles too.

This article is part of the Knowledge Worker Kit

Introduction

Without clear career goals, you’ll be at the mercy of the organizations you work for. They will make decisions that will impact you, either positively or negatively in the long run.

So the very first thing you need is clarity about your career goals. If you have clarity about your life goals, your priorities, values and principles, then designing your career will be easier. If you don’t, then please focus on those things first.

You need to make the right choices to go in the right direction and live a more fulfilling and happier life. And it’s not about ego and status games. It’s about alignment. Your career goals should align with your life goals. Because both are intertwined.

What matters:

Knowing where you want to go (i.e., planning ahead)
Making conscious decisions (i.e., choosing your own path)
Knowing if you’re on the right path (i.e., evaluating)
Staying on the right path: revisiting your choices regularly (i.e., reviewing)

Before we dive into the details, let's discuss important things you need to consider when preparing or revisiting your career plans.

Career design: It’s your own responsibility

One thing must be clear before we go any further: your own career is under your own responsibility. Never let others decide for you. Make your own choices. Design your own career. Other may present you with opportunities and options, but the choice is always yours.

Do not think that a company you work for will ever make decisions in your best interest. Companies make choices in their own best interest. Not yours.

You owe it to yourself to plan and design your career carefully. Follow your dreams, and to live the life you’re meant to live.

Take your life goals into account

When exploring your career goals, you need to take your life goals into account, in order to leave enough “space” and time for those. If those are not clear, then you need to start with those. Keep in mind that your career should serve your life. Not the other way around.

Work to live. Don’t live to work

Optimize for happiness

Always consider your work-life balance when setting/reviewing your career goals. In general, my recommendation is to optimize for happiness, because that’s where real wealth really is.

Just like your life goals, your career goals will evolve over time, along with you. They will evolve based on your current situation, constraints, stage of life, etc.

Ask yourself:

What suits me best?
What will satisfy my ambitions while leaving enough room for my other life roles?

Avoid status games

Status games are shallow. Reaching a certain status in life is very often superficial. You could become super wealthy/powerful/famous and still be unhappy. So make sure to avoid status games. Focus on what really brings you happiness at the end of the day. Surprisingly, it’s often the simple things that make the most difference.

Status games only flatter your ego. They don't lead anywhere meaningful.

For instance, I had what I would have considered a dream job when I was younger. I had great pay, many advantages, my own team, and a lot of autonomy. But in fact, it didn’t make me happy. Money gave me the security that I was after, but I had too much, and it didn’t make any major difference. At some point, I realized that I wasn’t spending enough time with my family, didn’t have enough actual freedom, and was working on projects that didn’t fulfill me. I had reached a certain status, but it didn’t do me any good. Then I launched my own company and realized that I could live a very different life. I worked less and had a lot more freedom and enough money. And that made a huge difference, I was much happier then. This is a tangent as it applies more to work than life, but both are deeply intertwined.

Think about your ideal work-life

Think about what you want to spend time working on. Think about your ideal work life:

How would you spend your work days, ignoring your current constraints and limits
What would a successful career look like to you?
Who would you work with?
What kind of projects would you work on?
What would you be responsible for?
How much stress would you be willing to bring into your life?
What would motivate you to wake up and go to work, every single day, for the next 40 years?
…

These are questions that you should ask yourself regularly. The answers will vary over time.

Make sure you understand the impact of your choices

When you define or revisit your career goals, make sure you are ready to actually sacrifice what you will need to in order to get where you want. If not, then maybe you need to revisit your goals.

Sacrifices may be about leisure time, revenue, spending, etc. And those sacrifices may negatively impact your life. So choose wisely. That being said, consider that making some sacrifices may be worth it, for short periods of time. It all depends on what the counterpart is.

Consider the different “stages” of your career

As with life goals, you need to consider the different “stages” of your life when defining your career goals. Some goals might make sense at 20, but much less at 50. For instance, I wouldn't drop everything to join a startup requiring me to work nights and weekends. Time has passed for that. I don't want to do that anymore.

As a side note, don’t dampen your ambitions too early. The right time to fulfill your dreams is probably sooner than you think.

Understand the skills you need

For each of the career goals you have identified, make sure to do enough research in order to get a clear sense of the skills you need to acquire or develop in order to achieve those goals.

Go from vague to specific

You will not achieve all your career dreams. Some will contradict. Some will require so much time that they’ll prevent you from doing other things. It’s all about choosing the right path for yourself.

For each career goal you have in mind, get to the deeper why, and make sure it’s not about status and/or vanity. Choose meaningful and fulfilling career goals

Explore the following questions:

What do I find inspiring about that occupation?
What will the work environment be like?
What are the responsibilities?
What hard and soft skills are required to get that kind of position?
Which level of experience is required?
Where would I work?
Is work-life balance still possible with that kind of position?
What are the advancement opportunities?
What training/support can I expect to receive?
…

Once you know more about your career goals, be as specific as possible. Turn those ideas into SMART goals. You can also use Reverse Goal Setting in order to create a game plan for each goal. Those are explained in great detail in the Knowledge Worker Kit.

Evaluate your skills gap

A useful exercise when thinking about career goals is to evaluate your current skill set. To do so, you can use the Personal Evaluation template that I've shared here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i6NKWMR4B309fdf_TVIzzl6KIpfyvNj-5YdxUI3_AeU/edit?usp=sharing

Use the Personal Evaluation template to evaluate your current skills and your knowledge gaps

Using it, you can identify the skills/competencies/attributes you need to improve in order to achieve your goals. Assuming you have done your homework, this can prove useful to clearly define the steps that will lead you where you want.

Career and Time Horizons: Knowing where you want to go

Unless you win the lottery or have tremendous success, your entire career will span decades. You obviously can’t expect to make the right choices all the time. Mistakes are to be expected. You obviously can’t plan everything ahead of time. There will be surprises, roadblocks, and forks at various points on the road.

Keep in mind that what matters most is the journey, and not only the destination. Focusing on the end of the journey is a recipe for disaster.

At best, you can make sound decisions for the next 3 years. It doesn’t mean that you cannot have plans for longer periods of time. It’s just that the longer the time span, the less certainty you can have. You definitely will change your mind over time. You will change. Your environment will change. Your circumstances will change. And of course, the world itself will evolve.

Direction is vastly more important than speed. As Paulo Coelho rightly put it:

Change. But start slowly, because direction is more important than speed — Paulo Coelho

Taking your values, principles, purpose, goals and non-goals into account, you need to define a plan for your career. Your career plan will always be in flux. It will need to evolve along with you. But in all cases, that plan is a must. Without one, you won’t be able to establish and keep alignment and cohesion.

Just like your life goals, your career plan will serve as a roadmap, helping you make more informed decisions about what to do next. The plan is not the goal. The goal is making better decisions.

While creating or updating your career plan, focus on different time horizons:

This year
Next year
Next 3 years
Next 5 years
Next 10 years
End goal

For each time horizon, decide where you want to go and what you want to do, knowing that:

You should have a lot more certainty and confidence about the shorter time horizons
It’s recommended to dream BIG for the longer time horizons
You should really put your ego aside and avoid playing status games (except tactically/strategically)
You should think about work/life balance, and leave enough room for non-work goals (i.e., keep a sane equilibrium between work, family, and the rest)
You will not be able to achieve everything, no matter what

For each career goal you set, be as specific as you can:

Clearly describe what your goal is
Do enough research to understand the skills required, the risks, and the implications on your life, finances, free time, responsibilities, health, etc
Define your success criteria: what will it take to achieve that goal? How will you know you have succeeded?
List the top 5 actions you need to take in order to progress toward that goal. Which skills do you need to acquire or develop? Which resources will you need?
Define your plan B: what will you do if you fail to achieve that goal within the desired time frame?

In practice, a career plan is very much like a project plan.

As I’m writing this, one of my main career goals is gaining more freedom to focus on entrepreneurship. Not to play video games all day, but to be able to dedicate much more time to helping others grow. Why? Because that’s really fulfilling for me. I intend to achieve that goal within the next 3-5 years. I don’t want to put too much pressure on my shoulders, but I know I don’t want to keep my corporate job for much longer than that. If I fail, I know I will have to find alternatives, because at this stage of my career, a corporate job is not fulfilling for me.

Dare to dream. It’s not because you followed some path for a long time that you can’t explore a new one. I know people who went back to school at 50, others like me who went from having a full-time day job to founding companies, etc. Your current path is never the only possible one. At every step, there are an infinite amount of alternative paths you can take.

The present holds infinity in itself - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Be bold, ambitious, but consider the steps along the way. Sometimes it’s valuable to take a few steps on the side, slow down, rest for a bit, and enjoy the view. Life is not only about achievements.

In addition, do consider opportunities to learn, and grow. Sometimes the slow path is the right way. Sometimes, exploring the unknowns leads to realizations that you could not have foreseen otherwise. I’ve seen people explore a new topic, and discover that it’s what they always wanted to do.

Last but not least, always consider the impact of your choices on your personal life, freedom, and happiness. It is not an option. You owe it to yourself, for your health and sanity.

Making Conscious Career Decisions

Once you have your career plan, you will be able to make more informed decisions about your career. And that’s a must. For instance, I know that I’m not interested in applying to new job roles within my company because it would negatively impact my current goals. Yes I could gain more money each month, finish paying the mortgage earlier, etc. But it would just force me to neglect and delay my other goals. So the choice is clear for me: keep my current position, and do everything I can to progress on my entrepreneurial projects using my free time.

Without clarity and without a plan, I’d probably already have applied to switch jobs. But since I know what I want, I also know what I don’t, and I can make conscious decisions.

Career Status Quo: Knowing if you’re on the right path

Evaluating your current circumstances and progress toward your goals is really important if you really want to achieve those. But it’s not only about achieving the goals you set previously. It’s also about ensuring that those still make sense for your current self.

There are different "signs" that you need to pay attention to in order to uncover alignment/cohesion issues indicating that you may not be on the right path:

The projects you work feel uninspiring, uninteresting
Your current job role doesn’t feel GREAT
You feel frustrated by the work environment
You sigh every time you think about going to work
You procrastinate a lot, push back important projects and tasks

Procrastination is particularly interesting. Oftentimes, it indicates that there’s an underlying inner conflict. It may be related to anxiety, fear, or simply, a lack of interest.

Don't ignore those signs, because you might very well be on a path leading to bore-out or burnout.

If your goals are clear enough, then it shouldn’t be hard to know if you’re progressing or not.

Being on the right path is not only about checking boxes on your career plan. It has to FEEL right as well. And a big part of that is unconscious. In order to better understand if your current circumstances really suit you, you need to do some introspection. In this regard, I’ve found Personal Knowledge Management and Journaling to be extremely valuable. Regularly take notes about your work days/weeks. Keep track of what you achieved, what you enjoyed, what you’re grateful for, what frustrated you, demotivated you, how certain events made you feel, etc. If you take time to do that regularly, then it will be much easier to uncover your true feelings about the status quo.

If you keep looking out the window and thinking “there must be something else out there for me”, then know this: there is. And it’s up to you to make the required changes to get it. Take responsibility for your own life and career. Call that a sign, destiny, a hunch or whatever. It’s just a dream that you could pursue, until you actually take the necessary steps to turn it into reality.

Importantly, you also need to learn how to distinguish good pain from bad pain. It's not necessarily a bad sign if you are currently struggling at work. Good pain means effort. Bad pain means damage. Acknowledge the fact that good pain will most often make for a brighter future.

Staying on the right path: revisiting your career choices regularly

Last but not least, you need to review your career plan regularly enough. I personally do it once a year as part of my yearly reviews, and I consider that to be the bare minimum. A whole lot happens in a single year, and the plans you made a year ago might not be aligned with you and your current circumstances anymore.

Take a few hours each year to revisit your career plan and your goals. Again, fight against your ego. Life is not about flattering it and showing off to others. It’s about being happy and fully aligned with yourself.

Check out my article about periodic reviews to learn more about the "how".

Focus on what gives meaning to your life. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it fulfills you and gives you joy. As long as there is deeper meaning, there is profound happiness. Days may look the same, but every step of the journey is meaningful - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Worst vs best case plans: What’s your plan B?

Another thing I recommend while preparing/updating career plans is to consider both the best and worst case scenarios. Always have a viable “Plan B”.

For instance, with the rise and acceleration of AI, Knowledge Work is going through a huge shift. Evolution is a constant, and while we can’t anticipate how things will play out, it’s useful to try and anticipate the future, at least partly, and prepare adequately.

I want you to consider your alternatives. What will you do if your ideal plan fails? Failure is never the end, it’s just a step, an opportunity to learn and grow. For each element in your career plan, consider alternative paths.

For instance, my main plan is to stop being an employee, be my own boss, focus all my energy on entrepreneurship, and helping others grow. But if I don’t manage to make it a reality, I know what I’ll do, and you should too.

Consider uncommon career paths

Society is wired to push us toward classical employment. Grow up, go to school, optionally go to university, find a stable job, marry, have kids, etc. That’s the classical path. But it’s not the only one. And if you’re young, it’s worth considering other, less common career paths.

You can be your own boss, especially early in life, when you don’t have much pressure to bring money back home and put food on the table. But even if you’re older and have followed the classical path so far, transitioning to a different path is possible.

Some examples:

Founding a company (brick and mortar or digital)
Freelancing
Bootstrapping
Solopreneurship (e.g., create and sell digital products and/or services)
Writing books
…

I wanted to mention this because your career shouldn’t just reflect the opinions of those around you. Chances are that you are currently surrounded by people following the classic path, and not considering alternatives as viable or even possible. While, in reality, many successful people have followed uncommon life roads.

Conclusion

As with many other things, a career can be carefully designed. It doesn't have to take ages to do, but it needs to be done. If you skip the career design process, then others will decide for you, and you'll suffer the consequences. Don't let others decide. Make your own career plans.

The key takeaways from this article include:

Taking responsibility for your own career design
Align your career goals with your life goals and optimize for happiness
Avoid status games, and focus on meaningful, fulfilling objectives
Consider different career stages and time horizons
Do some research, evaluate your skills gaps and make conscious decisions
Regularly review and adjust your career plan
Always have a Plan B
Consider unconventional career paths
Keep in mind that you will make mistakes and that failures are opportunities to learn and grow

By following these principles, you can create a career that not only serves your professional ambitions but also lets you live the life you want. Remember, your career should complement your life, not dominate it.

Going further

To dive deeper into these concepts and gain practical tools for implementing them, consider exploring the Knowledge Worker Kit. It offers deep insights, mental models, frameworks, strategies, templates and tools you can use to accelerate your progress. With it, you'll be better equipped to navigate the complexities of modern work life. Take the next step in your professional development and unlock your full potential with the Knowledge Worker Kit:

Bonus: Career plan template

Here’s a simple template you can use. No need for something more fancy.

This year
- Main goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Secondary goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Plan B
  - What?
  - How?
Next year
- Main goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Secondary goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Plan B
  - What?
  - How?
Next 3 years
- Main goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Secondary goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Plan B
  - What?
  - How?
Next 5 years
- Main goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Secondary goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Plan B
  - What?
  - How?
Next 10 years
- Main goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Secondary goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Plan B
  - What?
  - How?
End goal
- Main goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Secondary goal
  - What?
  - How?
- Plan B
  - What?
  - How?

Resources

Personal Evaluation template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i6NKWMR4B309fdf_TVIzzl6KIpfyvNj-5YdxUI3_AeU/edit?usp=sharing

References

The mythical right time
Periodic reviews
How To Set Career Goals | Career Advice | Hays
WorkLife: How to grow a purposeful career)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a book I highly recommend reading
The Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ DeMarco
Summary: Book Notes: The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime - James Gill