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Setting personal and professional goals is a great way to stay motivated and organized and achieve your desired outcome. However, it’s important to understand the difference between the two types of goals, so what are personal vs professional goals?
Personal goals are what you want to achieve in your personal life, while professional goals are what you want to achieve in your career, or are set in collaboration with an employer. Both types of goals are important, but they often require different approaches.
For example, a personal goal might focus on our relationships, health, or personal development, while a professional goal might focus on our job performance, career advancement, professional development or financial security, both can be either long term goals or short term goals.
Now we know what personal Vs professional goals are, lets look at some more detailed examples of what they might be and then move onto how you can set them.
What are some examples of personal goal setting?
– Losing weight
– Saving money
– Exercising more
– Quitting smoking
– Reducing stress
– Improving relationships
– Taking a dream vacation
– Having children
What are some examples of professional goal setting?
– Developing a new skill or knowledge
– Achieving a promotion
– Earning a pay rise
– Starting a new business
– Winning a new contract
– Leading a team or department
– Delivering a project on time and within budget
– Career change
Of course these are just a fraction of the personal Vs professional goals you could set, the list is really endless, but hopefully they have given you some ideas for goal setting, so lets move onto how to set them.
How to set personal goals vs professional goals
There is no definitive answer to this question, as it depends your specific goals and priorities. However, here are some general tips on how to set personal goals vs professional goals:
Identify what is important to you in both your personal and professional life
Think about what you want to achieve in each area. For example if you’re looking to set some professional goals, or a career goal then take into account what your long-term career aspirations are and what skills you need to develop to achieve them.
Also bear in mind that whereas personal development goals are set entirely by you, so they can usually be changed and adapted as and when required, a professional development goal can sometimes be set by you in collaboration with your company or employer so they can prove more difficult to change once set in place.
Once you have a good sense of what you want, you can start setting some specific goals. Write them down and make sure they’re realistic, achievable, and measurable.
Finally, create a plan of action with deadlines and milestones to keep you on track to achieving them.
Creating Personal Vs Professional SMART Goals
One of the most popular methods of setting goals is using the SMART system, which can be implemented for both personal goals and professional goals.
SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound meaning they are clear, concise realistic goals that are attainable and have a timeline.
For example, a goal to “lose weight” is not a SMART goal because it is not specific or measurable, whereas a goal to “lose 10 pounds in 3 months” is.
Here is another good example of a personal SMART goal:
Specific: I will save £500 in my savings account by the end of the year.
Measurable: I will save £50 a month to achieve this.
Achievable: I’m earning £25,000 a year and have an after-tax salary of £2,700 a month, so it’s achievable.
Relevant: It’s important that I save money to buy a house, so this is relevant to my long-term goals.
Time-bound: I will reach this goal by the end of December.
Here is an example of a SMART professional goal:
Specific: I will achieve a 90% success rate in all of my sales this month.
Measurable: I set myself a target of making 20 sales a day and achieving a 90% success rate.
Achievable: I have averaged 16 sales a day in the past month, so I know I can achieve this.
Relevant: This is relevant to my job, because it’s important to achieve a high success rate.
Time-bound: I will achieve this success by the end of the month.
Final Thoughts
Setting personal and professional goals is a great way to stay motivated and organized and achieve your desired outcome.
Knowing what’s most important to you in both your personal and professional life is a great starting point, as you will then be able to set goals that are relevant to what you want.
And remember that using the SMART system outlined above to set both personal goals and professional goals is a great way to ensure you’re goal setting is effective.
Also, make sure you remember to review your progress and your goals on a regular basis to see how you’re doing.
I hope you found this post on setting personal vs professional goals helpful, if so you may also be interested in our post on Goals vs Objectives vs Outcomes explained.
