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What goals should you set for success in all aspects of your life? What are the major areas of life to set goals?
You might want goals for every part of your life: finances, career, relationships, health, etc. However, it’s important to strike a balance when considering the areas of life to set goals. While you can’t prioritize everything, you also shouldn’t neglect everything to just focus on one or two areas.
Here are some things to consider when setting goals in different areas of your life.
1. Setting Career Goals
Your career is one of the most important areas of life to set goals for. If you don’t set career goals, you might end up taking up opportunities that may be profitable but that don’t realize your potential.
According to Peter Drucker, the author of Managing Oneself, the first step to setting career goals is to self-reflect to find your strengths. Discovering your strengths is necessary to success because working on your strengths is the most efficient, and thus best, way to make yourself stand out and advance your career. It doesn’t take much effort to improve something you have a natural ability in, and this effort could turn you into an exceptional performer. Conversely, it would take a good deal of effort to work on areas in which you’re less skilled, and the results would be less impressive—taking you from poor to mediocre.
| The Importance of Favoring Your Strengths Drucker’s advice to work on the things you’re already good at may seem counterintuitive because you may assume that it’s important to focus on improving areas of weakness. However other authors have echoed this idea. For example, Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, suggests that it’s important to feel like you’re competent at your work, which can stem from choosing to do what you’re good at: in other words, playing to your strengths. Competence is important because it’s a pillar of the principle of self-determination, which is the intrinsic motivation you feel to perform well. In turn, self-determination brings a sense of job satisfaction. Therefore, if you play to your strengths and thus feel like you’re competent at your job, your sense of job satisfaction will naturally increase. |
To work from your strengths, you must first identify them. To that end, Drucker asks you to write down a prediction of what you think will happen every time you’re at a significant crossroads in your professional life and have to decide on a course of action. At the end of each prediction’s time period, go back and evaluate how accurate your assumptions were. Drucker’s suggested time window for predictions is nine to 12 months.
When you’re reflecting on the last nine to 12 months, frame your analysis around what went well and what didn’t go so well. Then, use this to infer your strengths, presuming that your successes were thanks to your strengths.
Once you know your strengths, you’re in a position to set a meaningful career goal. Start by setting a career-related target and then working backward to make a step-by-step plan for achieving it.
2. Setting Social Goals
Relationships are another area of life in which you should set goals. No matter how independent and skilled you are, you will not achieve success on your own. You need allies—both in your personal and your professional life.
In your personal life, surround yourself with people who help you and bring you joy. Reduce—or ideally eliminate—the time you spend with people who take more than they give. For example, if you routinely spend time with a friend who complains about everything and never offers anything positive or motivating, it’s in your interests to end that relationship.
In addition to personal relationships, you should put effort into developing your professional network. According to Richard Koch, the author of The 80/20 Principle, you should aim to build a network of six or seven top performers who you trust and respect, broken down as follows:
- One or two mentors with more industry experience than you
- Two or three professional peers with similar work experience
- One or two mentees who can keep you informed of emerging trends
By building alliances with people in different stages of their careers, you can benefit from diverse perspectives and knowledge. Just be sure to devote time to nurturing those relationships and be proactive in supporting your allies. High-quality professional allies yield high returns.
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