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For some people, the new year means new everything. They want a new job, they want to lose weight, they want to join the gym ... but Fionnuala Power, who is a careers expert with Clearview Coaching Group, says those grand plans don’t work for your career.

“They’re too big and they tend to fail and then you end up completely back at the start or even further back than where you began,” says Fionnuala.

So, how can you make sure these career ambitions don’t go awry? By coming up with a plan.

1 You need to first put aside time to look at what you want to achieve – nobody’s going to hand you the time, you actually have to put the time aside, take a weekend and think about it. A lot of people would say: ‘I don’t have the time.’ But if you look at how long you spend watching TV every week or on Facebook – things that aren’t much of a benefit – that time could be better spent on making a plan, which could be a huge benefit.

2 The next thing is that you have to write down your plan. If you come up with a very good plan in your head, it’s no good unless you put pen to paper. It physically needs to go down somewhere concrete – not just on a scrap of paper but in a diary or a journal.

3 Think about what career success looks like for you. A lot of the time we think of something like a promotion or more money, but that’s a very narrow focus. Some people will want things in their career like more flexibility if you have children for example, or if you want to study outside of work. You should be defining what success means to you personally rather than looking at it in terms of a company car or a bonus. That success won’t be the same for everyone. Defining that for yourself and why that’s career success is very important.

4 Once you define success for yourself, the next thing is to look at your priorities and to look at what can be tackled first. The main purpose of this is to avoid overwhelming yourself. Often when people get overwhelmed, they don’t end up doing anything –they’re just looking at it as this huge mountain. They don’t start because it’s too much. So we’re setting priorities to see which can be tackled first.

5 We tend to focus on things that are urgent rather than important and this is something that happens to us all in every area of our lives. Something can be very important but if it’s not urgent we tend to put it on the long finger or put it off and we tackle things that are urgent, even if they’re not that important. Look at your list again and look at things in order of importance rather than urgency. There’s always going to be a lot of urgent tasks.

6 Frame your goals as positively as possible. You need to look at that in terms of what you really want. So, for instance, if you feel that every single boss you’ve ever had has been micro-managing you, it’s probably that you don’t like having a boss and maybe you should be self-employed. You’re reframing everything in a very positive way. Take a negative experience, turn it around and look at the positive aspects of it.

7 Look at the dates and the times. You’re putting time scales into everything. So, rather than just writing down a list of goals, set achievable time frames that you can follow. If you don’t set a timeline, what tends to happen is that you keep moving it. It’s very important to use dates, otherwise it becomes more of a wish rather than a goal.

8 Be realistic about what you can achieve. For instance, if your plan is to hand in your notice tomorrow morning and enroll in college, obviously that is something you can do but it isn’t realistic. There are lots of things that you can control and lots of things that you can’t, so you need to be aware of what is under your control. You’re always being realistic and you’re taking steps towards a masterplan.

9 Review your plan regularly. If a change in your career is something you want to be meaningful and you want it to have an impact on your career, then you need to review it regularly and be prepared to make changes. For example, if your plan is that you want to get promoted within six months and you realise four months in that you actually would prefer to work a shorter week, then you need to be flexible and be able to change it rather than sticking rigidly to a plan that won’t make you happy.

10 Put your plan somewhere you will see it every day and refer to it. Perhaps keep it on the front page of your calendar or somewhere where you’ll see it on your phone. Look at it regularly so that it’s always at the top of your mind. Make sure it is somewhere that you can always see it so that you are regularly reminded and so that it doesn’t get buried under a load of things.

To work towards your long-term career goal, it is important to break your plan down into steps rather than the usual January mindset of taking a huge leap and changing everything at once. When a plan is broken down like this, it stops you becoming overwhelmed. The would-be job changer can then see they’re working towards achieving their goal, and this can motivate them further.