Many of us aspire to reach career success, but often find ourselves lost and unsure of where to start. We may even achieve success in our careers but still feel unhappy. The truth is, we often lack clarity, direction, and focus in our career path, and our actions and thoughts may not align with our values. Thus, it is vital to take time and be intentional about our career success journey to avoid a misdirected quest towards our goals.

The following guide outlines effective steps to achieve career success based on the principles of defining career success, knowing our values, setting short-term and long-term goals, understanding our ‘why’, breaking tasks into manageable steps, finding a mentor, surrounding ourselves with like-minded people, creating a solid plan, and taking small daily actions.

Define Career Success for Yourself

To achieve career success, one must first define what career success means to them. It is essential to clarify our idea of success without being influenced by external factors or societal norms. We can reflect on its meaning by pausing and giving ourselves time and space for self-reflection. We can ask ourselves questions such as, “What does a successful career mean to me?” and “What are my career success examples?”.

However, defining career success goes deeper than just reflecting on it. We must ask ourselves more meaningful questions like, “What do I mean by work-life balance?”, “What are opportunities for growth and advancement?”, “How do I like to be recognized at work?”, and “How do I know if my contributions have made an impact?”. The answers to these questions, once discovered, will help us set specific goals and take measured steps to achieve them.

Know Your Values

Values guide our decisions, behaviors, and actions. When we are not aligned with our values, we experience struggles, and our growth and learning are hindered. Therefore, it is crucial to identify what our core values are. We can start by finding a list of values and selecting the top five that jump out at us as personally important.

Once we have identified our core values, we must keep them visible. For example, we can create a vision board with our values, write them in our journal, or even use them as wallpaper for our computers or phones. These reminders will help us stay aligned with our values and make decisions that align with them.

Define Your Short-Term and Long-Term Goals

Setting short-term and long-term goals is important in achieving career success. We must set SMART goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. We can brainstorm and write down our goals using self-reflection questions like, “What would I want to do today if I had the power to make it the way I want?”, “What would I like to achieve if no hurdles were in the way?”, “What type of impact do I want to have on people?”, and “Who are the people I most admire?”.

We can take note of our goals and visualize having achieved them, then put our vision on paper and review it every day to track our progress. By laser-focusing on one goal at a time, we can behave and act in ways that solve problems and move us closer to our career goals.

Know your ‘Why’

It is essential to have a clear understanding of why we want to achieve our career goals. This reason should always be on our minds, enabling us to achieve our goals quickly and easily. Visualizing our goals and writing them down can help us remember our ‘why’. Michael Hyatt summarizes this principle when he says, “When you know your why, you’ll know your way.” By keeping our ‘why’ in mind, we can stay focused and process the problems we face daily.

Break Tasks Into Manageable Steps

Big tasks and projects can be overwhelming, leading most people to procrastinate starting them until the eleventh hour, which could be disastrous. We can manage big projects by breaking them down into manageable tasks that we can quickly complete. To make this process more manageable, we can break yearly projects into monthly tasks, then to simpler daily tasks.

Breaking down tasks can improve our focus and help us manage our time effectively. We are more likely to know precisely what we should do every time and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Find a Mentor

Mentorship is a great way to achieve career success on our terms. However, finding a good mentor can be challenging as most people have busy schedules. We can start by observing the working process they’ve adopted over the years to familiarize ourselves with it.

A mentor can motivate us when we feel discouraged and help us overcome obstacles, moments of weakness, and distractions. We can always reach out to them for advice when we feel hopeless.

Surround Yourself with Like-Minded People

To achieve career success, we must surround ourselves with people who align with our career goals. We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with; thus, we must choose our friends wisely, whether at home or in the workplace.

By surrounding ourselves with great people, we can lift ourselves higher. We must be mindful of toxic people in our careers and personal lives and avoid them at every possible opportunity.

Create a Solid Plan and Take Small Daily Actions

Lastly, we must create a solid plan to achieve our career success goals and commit to taking small, actionable steps every day to accomplish them. By taking small, consistent actions every day, we are more likely to reach our ultimate career success goals.

In conclusion, achieving career success is a journey that requires self-reflection, understanding our values, setting SMART goals, identifying our ‘why,’ breaking tasks into manageable steps, finding a mentor, surrounding ourselves with like-minded people, creating a solid plan and taking small daily actions. With persistence, hard work, and a little bit of luck, we can determine the right path towards our idea of career success.