Do you constantly feel that time is still not enough? Or is it that you don’t feel accomplished enough? Or maybe you are dissatisfied with what you are doing right now?

You need to set a goal in your work life. We all have personal goals in our lives. Be it “I want to grow up to be a doctor.” or “I’m so going to reward myself with that Gucci bag when my pay comes.” or maybe a simple “I must remember to buy bread before I go home.” So why can’t we set the same kind of goals for our work?

1. Daily
In the morning, set a realistic and yet simple goal for yourself at work. Be it “I want to clear all my emails today.” or a “I must finish up the task my boss gave me yesterday.” It will make you satisfied at the end of the day when you have completed your daily goals. And if you can’t complete them, ask yourself whether your goal is too difficult or have you been productive or did something or someone stop you from completing that goal. If yes is in your answers, then try not to repeat that again the next day.

2. Weekly
Set an end goal for end of the week to target for. Make it as straightforward as possible. It can be “I want to make sure I had half an hour with each of my team members by end of this week.” or “I want to squeeze all possible meetings this week so I can have more time next week to complete my project.” And do reward yourself on weekend for achieving your target. Once again, if you can’t, always evaluate the reasons and how you can do better the following week. This makes sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

3. Monthly 
Have a monthly aim on the quality of the work produced by you. If you manage a team, check on your team performance, do the results satisfy you? Could you do better? What are the areas you can improve further? Check back with your manager and your peers to help you see your performance from a different angle. Take criticism positively and carefully. However, do question them if you think they are not accurate. And ask yourself why they had that impression of you.

If you follow all 3 different types of goals, you can be assured that you are right on track. When you do evaluate yourself, be brutally honest so that you know and understand your flaws.

Consistently check back with people who work closely with you and align yourself to be on the same path as them. Write down the positive things you did right, also note down the things you have improve, do include the weakness that you wish to work on. Using that list, get daily, weekly or monthly goals to get rid of the weaknesses. By having a list will also help you to draft your yearly appraisal, too many people I know rushed through their appraisal and not giving themselves enough credits. Like one of my friends said “Appraisal is something you summarize for your manager to see so that you can jog his memories of what you have achieve throughout this year.”

Please don’t procrastinate, that will usually lead to career suicide and by the time you realize it, a lot of people have grown faster than you and you are lagging behind the team.

Do reward yourself when a goal is accomplished with little stuff. I used to tell myself if I get that assignment done within this week instead of taking 2 weeks to do it, I’ll treat myself to a movie with popcorn!

This is a short post but an important one. I hope you have enjoy reading it. Do follow me at Twitter or Facebook to receive notifications on my latest articles.