By Samuel Rosenberg
INFLATION increases the cost of almost everything we buy across each and every twelve month period, so to match your ever increasing needs a raise in pay each year is both desirable and essential for your income to go as far as last year, if not further.
For individuals with a structured job where you know exactly what you will be paid every week and every month, it may be more challenging to find ways to increase your income. Many people neglect to consider other ways to increase their income or reduce their expenses, and this applies to people at all intelligence levels.
A recent paper shows that 84% of Harvard graduates fail to have specific career objectives. Just 13% have considered their long-term career goals. When these targets were reviewed 10 years later, those with career goals were earning more than twice their peers that failed to plan ahead.
This should tell you that setting your goals and writing them down is vitally important unless you aim to be very lucky and never plan, yet achieve everything and more. Where you are part of the 99.9%, you can certainly get ahead and keep on the right track by planning your goals.
Some individuals intend to stay with their employer for the rest of their lives, perhaps changing roles and going up the company ladder within the business by accident, or when someone leaves.
To achieve the best goals, clarity in your vision will help you succeed. Where your career goals are specific as you look into the future, when you understand where you wish to be in the short to medium and long term, it is easier to plan a vision for yourself, your family life and your career.
Better goals balance the type of challenges that you create for yourself matched to realistic outcomes. We can’t all become leader of the government, but somebody will be.
Some people enjoy their work and others do not. Part of your goal setting for your career is to be committed to the changes that you need to make and this may involve mixing the good, with the bad and the ugly. Where your goal is important to you and attainable, your attitude will increase the opportunities of your success.
By creating the best conditions for your success and by writing down and keeping those with you at all times, your goals and targets for your career path will dramatically increase the end result; possibly arriving ahead of target. Where your goals are realistic, you will reduce the opportunity of burning out on the way by trying to reach unrealistic targets too soon.
When you share your goals with the individuals who are important in your life, they will understand your motives and see the changes in your career milestones, which you can adapt and alter as you move through each stage. Getting a raise does not involve sitting around and waiting and hoping for things to happen to you, or for you. The raise will occur in connection with the success of your planning.
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Samuel Rosenberg is the founder and CEO of Axcel Finance Ltd., the leading regional microfinance institution. Share your thoughts and email your questions to [email protected]