#187 - Can you answer this 7 word, career changing, question?

What is your career goal this year?

If you don't know the answer to this question, you can be certain of one thing: you won't achieve it.

Without a target, a direction of travel, you will be, by definition; aimless.

So how should you find and set your career goal for this year?

There's a nice story about Warren Buffet (the billionaire investor) giving his personal pilot some advice on this topic of setting goals:

  • Write a list of the 25 things you want to want to get done
  • Circle the top 5 most important priorities in your list
  • Avoid the other 20 at all costs

Or as Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson so eruditely put it:

Never half-ass two things. Whole ass one thing.

— Ron Swanson

Sadly, this Buffet story isn't actually true, with Warren debunking it at the 2013 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder's meeting, saying "I can't recall making a list in my life."

(We'll look at something we can all learn from Warren, tomorrow.)

But the principle seems sound, even if only as a thought exercise, to see what really matters most to you and to focus on that alone throughout the year.