A very happy new year 🙂
One of the first non-negotiable tasks I complete (and recommend you) every year is setting a vision for the year for several reasons I share with you in this article.
Are you a “to-do list” person who already has a familiarity with organizing their schedule and accomplishing goals?
Or are you struggling with keeping up with the goals you set for yourself
Or are you a “doing-things-on-the-go” kind of person and would like to give “goal setting” a try?
This article will help you identify important milestones for you, set goals to achieve those milestones, and how to work towards those them and set yourself up for success.
If you are ready to begin right away, skip this article and join the newsletter community. At the end of the month, the first newsletter is coming out where I share exclusively, a detailed run-through of how to set goals. I let you in on how exactly I set my annual goals with actual pictures, what type of goals I set in 2023, if I achieved all goals, and how you can do it too.
Why care about setting annual goals?
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Even outside of PhD, I have found setting goals to be helpful in achieving my personal milestones because we all exist outside of our academic life. It’s easy to forget that and I remind myself of this fact almost every week. PhD is rigorous (anywhere between 3-6 years), it can quickly become monotonous, mundane, and can leave you feeling stuck.
Setting goals will allow you to-
- avoid feeling lost, overwhelmed, or like an imposter
- make tangible progress and feel secure about your capabilities
- evolve as an independent researcher and professional
None of us have the same level of motivation everyday. Personally, I am on a roll on some days and have a good 5 hours of productivity without taking an extended break. On other days, I just stare at the screen struggling to get through a paragraph. A few days of no productivity or staring at the screen for hours can quickly become a few weeks or months of doing so, leaving you feeling frustrated by the lack of progress. This is one reason to set goals.
Another reason, especially for those students who aspire to achieve so much that there is too much going on in your own mind that you end up making a long list of things you’d like to accomplish. So, where do you start? How do you determine what is the most important?
If you are wondering, goal setting comes as a blessing in disguise just like it did for me.
Where to start?
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Let’s start with setting goals for the upcoming academic or calendar year (whatever you prefer). Think of all the milestones that you’d like to achieve this year and make a list. This can be anything from “submit xyz manuscript” to “attend a conference” to “refine research interests”. It has to be things that are most important to you and your responsibilities. I have shared my 2023 annual goals here.
Once you have a list, ensure that you set no more than 6-8 goals for one year. If you have made a longer list, try to identify what goals are the most important ones for the current year and which ones can be pushed to next year or at least until after a couple months. This is important to not overwhelm yourself with too many goals.
Let’s face it, we all have had days when we just don’t want to get out of bed. For some people, it can be weeks. So, always leave a room for yourself to breathe amidst the PhD hustle. Being mindful of the number of goals also helps you put in 100% of your energy towards each goal instead of accomplishing 15 goals haphazardly and deliver a half-finished product.
GOOD NEWS!! If you get through all of your goals early, you can always add some other goals from the “waiting list”, so don’t discard the ones that didn’t make the cut for the final goals of the current year.
Digging deeper into every goal
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Now that you have a vision of how you’d want your academic year to look like, you have laid a foundation. You have completed the “DREAM BIG” part. Now it’s time to build a roadmap of how you will get to those dreams. The fun part. The action part.
After you have 6-8 goals, take one goal at a time, and think of 2-3 tasks or actions that you need to complete to accomplish that goal. I have a worksheet for you already to get started now.
For example, I am currently writing a systematic review paper. I have completed reviewing abstracts and selecting final studies to include in the review. Now, my goal for this year is “submit the systematic review paper”, which is the dreaming part. I have identified some actionable steps to accomplish this dream –
- discuss findings with my mentor
- write introduction and discussion section
- identify a journal
- submit the paper for publication
Here is another real-life example: last year, I wanted to get involved in a particular international society for my professional development. So, the goal I set was “attend a conference and volunteer time”. Some actionable steps I identified were-
- explore the website and note down some student opportunities
- reach out to the leader or the contact person
- get involved in a committee and volunteer some time
- attend the upcoming year’s conference and build network
Again, your goals will look different from mine depending on your vision.
Repeat this process for each of your goals. Listing actionable steps is the most important part of goal setting. Without it, you will end up just dreaming all year without transforming these dreams into tangible reality.
Okay. Goals are set. Roadmap is built. Now what?
Set goals, set actions, what next?
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Now, it’s time to start working towards it. One goal at a time. I do not recommend looking at these goals everyday or even every week. These are the goals that will take time to accomplish and looking at them too frequently can lead to dissatisfaction about your progress. It is best to refer to the goals maybe every couple months. I personally look at them once in 4-5 months and see where I am at and if I need to put in additional efforts.
Sometimes if there is too much going on, I modify the goals to cater to my needs. Remember, the goal for creating this roadmap is for you to make progress, no matter how slow or fast it is.
The ultimate goal is not to check off each and every item on the list, in fact, the goals can be modified, added, or pushed to next year if the situation calls for it.
While I don’t recommend looking at the goals frequently, I strongly suggest referring to the actionable steps often. Without the actionable steps, you won’t get closer to your dreams, so look at the actionable steps, maybe every couple weeks and evaluate how much progress you have made and how much work is still needed.
Set weekly tasks to further break it down. Using my systematic review example, at one point, I was stuck reviewing abstracts for a couple months and couldn’t get past it. There were thousands of abstracts I reviewed and for some reason, I couldn’t get myself to review the last 100 of them. So, I set a task to review 50 abstracts in a week and got through the last batch in 2 weeks and finally could move forward.
Personalize it. Get creative with it. Use colors if needed. Or keep it simple. But, set goals. Set goals and you will magically find time to do other things. The last and the most fun part of goal setting comes at the end of the year, when you look at the goals, and if you have followed the actionable steps with dedication, you will see the results by checking off most (or all) goals on your list. You will be excited to set goals for the next year and there is no going back (for the good) once you live life the “dreaming big, setting goals” way.
If you want to know how I repeat this process each year and how you can do it too, join my newsletter where I exclusively walk you through my goals for 2023.
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