How to achieve your goals at work in 2023
The start of a new year brings a lot of opportunities for achievement in both your personal and professional life. Whether your workplace requires you to set new goals at the start of every year or you want to take the initiative yourself, sometimes the hardest part is working out exactly how to achieve your goals at work. Once you know what you’re aiming for and have set your goals for work, the next struggle is sticking to the goal. We’ve put together some tips to help you achieve your goals at work and become the best version of yourself in 2023.
Your goals can be anything that you feel you need to improve on, big or small. Maybe you’d like to learn a new skill to make your working life easier, or maybe you just want to improve your communication skills to make working with your team a breeze. Look into courses you can take to help you develop a new skill, research tools you could learn to use to improve your work, or just aim to improve your time management skills.
A key part of achieving your goals is setting up a useful plan. Time management is a huge asset here – don’t let your everyday work ethic slip while trying to fit in extra training! If that’s exactly what you’re aiming to improve, look into buying a planner or finding one online so you can plan your daily schedule and know how much time you have left in the day.
If you’re setting aside a chunk of time in the evenings or at the weekends, make sure you till get a good work-life balance. Take some time for yourself and spend time with your friends and family, and don’t get overwhelmed with the workload.
We’ve all done it before - you tell yourself you’ll stick to something but, as time goes by, it just gets pushed aside and next thing you know it’s been weeks since your goals even crossed your mind. Once you’ve made your plan or timeline, make sure you follow through. Of course, some variations to the schedule are to be expected from time to time, but staying on top of the workload will be much easier if you consistently put some time and effort in instead of scrambling to make some progress before a check in.
There are lots of things that can stop you from achieving your goals at work, including external distractions and procrastination or a fear of failure. It’s up to you to find a space to work in where you can focus after setting aside the time to do so and, if you’ve set some time aside to work on yourself, don’t waste it! Even a little bit of progress is better than none and completing one online class is doing more than you did last year. Looking at progress in small increments can help overcome any fear of failure and keep the perfectionism at bay.
Checking in on your progress is extremely important to make sure you’re on track for where you want to be. The frequency of the check-ins can vary - maybe you’d like to report monthly to get a good view of how you’re doing, or you might prefer to be left to your own devices and see how far you get in six months. This can also depend on your company and the availability of your supervisors but, if you feel like you need some more guidance, there’s no harm in asking! If communication is one of your goals, simply asking for help is already a great improvement on your skills.
If you’ve set this challenge for yourself, why not just take note every month or so of what you’ve found difficult, and ways you can improve? This will also help to hold yourself accountable since you’ll have physical evidence of what you’ve been working on.
You’ll be able to achieve more in less time if you have a support system you can lean on, and this can look different for everyone. This could be your boss or supervisor at work, your colleagues who are venturing on a similar journey, or even your friends and family helping to balance your new workload against your daily responsibilities. If you’re completing an online course, there are usually lots of resources online to help you if you’re feeling stuck, from instructor advice to message boards with other students. Your goal will feel like less of a challenge if you know you have some help to rely on.
If you’re looking to work at IQL and have already started planning your work goals, have a look at other ways you can improve your wellbeing while working at IQL.