Want A Successful Year? Create Strong Career Goals

What’s one career goal you’ve set for yourself this year, and how are you planning to achieve it? Let’s inspire each other with ideas—let us know in the comments!

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Have you made your career goals for 2025 yet? The change of calendar year is a great time to reflect upon and recognize your accomplishments from the last year and set new career goals for the year ahead.

A common stumbling block in New Year’s goal setting, however, is that we tend to set goals that are too vague and too overwhelming to be realistically achieved. That doesn’t mean you have to give up your ambitions—you just have to be strategic about achieving them.

Getting SMART about career goals

One of my goals this past year was to pick up more freelance work. This goal sounds reasonable, as I already freelance outside of my current full-time job. However, when I posted about my hopes for the New Year on Facebook, my friend Maria—who has her Master’s in arts management—encouraged me to turn my vague resolution into a S.M.A.R.T. goal.

S.M.A.R.T. stands for a variation of: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. If your goal meets each of these criteria, it is much easier to achieve because you have a clear vision of what you are working towards.

So when it came to getting additional freelance work, I had to get more specific: How much additional work am I looking for? What types of projects do I want to work on?

Making my goal S.M.A.R.T. means breaking it down into the following steps:

• Follow up with current clients and let them know I am available to work on additional projects in the next month.
• Ask current clients to refer me to their contacts.
• Launch my portfolio website by March and make it clear I’m available for grant writing and project management gigs.
• Meet up with other freelancers monthly for networking, events, and work sessions.

Creating a personal strategic plan

Another strategy for achieving your career goals is to make a personal strategic plan. Not too long ago, I interviewed Justin Hocking, who is the Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, Oregon, for my upcoming book, and he discussed the importance of having a strategic plan for his organization and for his own career as a writer.

As you are making your goals, think about how they relate to where you want to be in one year, three years, and five years. Linking your goals to a larger vision can keep you motivated and bring that larger vision within your grasp.

Five tips for setting attainable career goals:

• Have a vision for your career in five years. This may change, but knowing where you want to be can help you break down the steps to get there. If you aren’t sure about this yet, you can simultaneously dream up your career journey through our free email course.
• Consider your career in balance with the rest of your life. What else are you working on this year? For example, if you are planning your wedding in addition to working toward a promotion, that may be too much to balance. Be kind to yourself and make sure career goals don’t mess with your work-life balance.
• Translate vague resolutions into strategic, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-based (S.M.A.R.T.) goals. You may need to break one resolution into several goals in order to make it specific enough. Don’t worry—by the end of the year, you will see how easy it was to achieve each smaller goal instead of the big, vague one.
• Have an accountability partner. Find a friend, colleague or mentor with whom you can check in with you about your goals on a regular basis, such as monthly, to discuss your progress and keep you engaged in working toward your goals.
• Acknowledge and celebrate your success. When you achieve your goal, however small, celebrate! Did you have a goal to network with four new people this month and you stuck to it? Great! When you acknowledge your success you will be motivated to continue.