When you commit yourself to a shift or change in your career, it is renewing, exhilarating and a period of significant personal growth. It is also an enormous addition to your life which will take time and a great deal of physical and emotional energy.

If you are already in "full-time" mode, something has to be modified or you will be exhausted, very stressed and unable to do a good job search. In general, it is a good idea to follow the rule, "If you add something to your life, you should drop something from your life." This is the time to consider life work balance with a serious look at how the "life" part of you is going to fare with the "work" part of you.

Perform a Reality Check

We live in a high-speed society which values working full-time, parenting full-time, participating in professional associations, developing a home, caring for our parents, being a good friend, being significant for a significant other, taking an interest in our community, building a fund for retirement and now acquiring competency to adjust to a constantly changing workplace. There simply is not time to "do it all" or "have it all."

In addition, some of you may be committing to a career shift or change that is not of your choice. It may have been forced on you because of a reorganization of your company, loss of a job, a change in marital status, illness, family crisis, a geographical move, or an empty nest. Any of these losses are great stressors in and of themselves and should not be shoved aside. We recommend that you read Bridges, Transitions, or take some time to read and process Hyatt and Gottlieb's chapter on "The Stages of Loss from Losing Your Job" from When Smart People Fail. You will be able to read and print out a hand-out adapted from that chapter on our Web site. The point is to avoid getting stuck in one of the stages, and you do that by going through the stages with understanding, not avoiding them.

One of the classic books in goal setting is Alan Lakien's How to Get in Control of Your Time and Your Life. As the title suggests, time management is an integral part of goal setting, and goal setting helps you get in charge of your life. Goal setting provides an opportunity to project into the future, grounds you, and helps you evaluate your life as a whole so that "life work balance" can be a reality. It helps you decide what to set aside as you add career development and a job search. There may not be enough time to have-it-all or do-it-all but goal setting can make you more "in charge of it all."

We have had students in goal-setting seminars who have returned year after year. Many have said they achieved their goals even though they hadn't looked at them during the year. The single act of thoughtfully writing their goals helped them keep their priorities in mind and their time devoted to the action needed to achieve them. We can't emphasize the act of writing down your goals too much. Write down a goal as specifically as possible and in the form of an "I" statement in the present tense. "I plan to own a house in the suburbs." "I want to be vice president of marketing for a high tech firm in Silicon Valley." "I will get trained in the basics of computer technology." Writing down your goals makes them concrete and preserved in your mind. That is why our clients felt coming to a goal setting seminar once a year was well worth the effort. 

Assess Your Life

These exercises will help you look at your life, at this point in time, by general categories with work/career being only one of them. You will be asked to write your thoughts about work/career, money, lifestyle/possessions, relationships, creative self expression, fun and recreation, personal growth and health.

The second exercise is a visual representation, a Wheel of Life, with each category from the "Goal Setting by Area of Life" exercise in pie- shaped wedges. The purpose of this exercise is to visually assess your current level of satisfaction with each area. You may also want to indicate the amount of time you are spending on each area. When completing these exercises, you will have an enhanced consciousness of the areas of your life, their relative importance to you and the amount of time and effort you spend on them.

Those exercises are followed by one which will help you prioritize what you have learned, focus on the changes you want to make in your life, and state these changes in the form of goal statements. This exercise, "Goal Setting: Lifetime Goals," was created by Alan Lakien. To help you get to the core of how you want to spend your life, he asks questions related to time periods. "What are your lifetime goals? How would you like to spend the next three years. If you knew now you would be struck by lightning six months from today, how would you live until then?" Lakien and every other goals expert stresses the importance of writing down your goals. In addition, he feels you can tap into your intuitive side by writing within a limited time period. At the end of the exercise, you are asked to choose your most important goals and prioritize them.

Set Your Goals

When you write your goals there are several points to keep in mind. 1. Write your goals down on paper as specifically as possible. A goal committed to paper becomes a concrete expression of your intentions. 2. State goals in the positive, something you want, not something you want to leave behind; you can even state it as a goal you have already attained. "I am the vice president of marketing for a high tech company." 3. Make your goals realistic and challenging, but not discouraging. Goal setting is not supposed to put you on a guilt trip or make you depressed. 4. Goals should be measurable so that progress can be noted. Make realistic deadlines so you can anticipate closure. 5. Keep a long-term focus so that you may learn from the setbacks rather than become discouraged. 6. Review your goals regularly; goals are a work in progress and will naturally need modifications. 7. Prioritize your goals, over and over. 8. Celebrate your successes.

The next step in your goal setting process is to compose action steps which will make your goals a reality and increase balance in your life. Action steps are concrete things that you can do. They prevent you from setting goals that will make you feel helpless. If you can't write action steps for attaining your goal, it isn't a proper goal for you at this time in your life. Writing down action steps for each goal is a necessary grounding activity; you will always know what you are supposed to be working on. Activities from this list can be included in your on-going weekly list of things to do. You will have things to check off and feel rewarded.

Sample Goal and Action Steps: I want to be a pediatrician for a family practice in rural Vermont by the time I am 30. Action Steps: 1. Study the industry of health care. 2. Learn everything about being a family practitioner. 3. Talk to a pediatrician in rural family practice. 4. Compare and contrast the various medical school programs. 5. Go to medical school. 6. Check out the economy and opportunities in Vermont and similar rural settings. 7. Find specific job opportunities. 8. Write resume and cover letters. 9. Interview for the job. Negotiate a salary and benefits package. 10. Take the job and prepare for the next.

Within each action step can be a number of other action steps. Writing down your goals and action steps at each step in the process will very likely insure they will happen. In addition, you will be able to measure your progress, stay focused on the long-range goal and ultimately able to celebrate your successes.

Implement and Evaluate Your Success

We recommend that you keep a notebook in which you write your goals in the form of a working draft. Goal statements, if they are good, are always an on-going process. They will evolve as you gather more information and as major changes occur in any area of your life and in the lives of people close to you. If one of your goals is not serving you, it is okay to give it up.

Repeating the goal-setting process at least once a year is a good idea; many people use their birthdays as a reminder. You may want to set goals once, twice or three times a year which is terrific. You may want to have an overall plan for your life and in addition, set specific goals for yourself each week or each day. The process of goal setting is the same at any level. These intermediary goal setting activities should not interfere or conflict with your overall life time goals. Rather they will enhance the original list.

When you finish the exercises, you will have an overall working plan focusing on the changes you want to make in your life. This plan will result in easier decision making and consequently better time management. Reward yourself each time you accomplish an action step. You deserve it! Before you know it, you will have attained your goals and created a life worth living.