Clarify Your Goals
If you're beginning a search for a position or taking stock of your career, you need to make choices that will affect your practice, lifestyle and personal life. The wrong choice of a practice affiliation or practice location can be the source of great emotional and financial pain, but knowing yourself can guide you in making decisions that are right for you.
Posted in Planning on Thursday, November 10, 2016
Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
This first step may be the most difficult. It requires you to honestly determine what you want to do and where you want to be in terms of your chiropractic career. Creating both long-term (3-5 years) and short-term (1-3 years) goals can help clarify the choices you make regarding your career.
Your goals should be SMART:
- Specific – make them concrete and concise
- Measurable – set goals so you can measure your progress.
- Achievable – set attainable goals rather than ones so lofty they may never be within your reach
- Realistic – set goals you believe you can achieve
- Timely – set a reasonable timeframe for achieving each goal
For example, one of your goals might be: To network with 10 local businesses each month beginning next month.
Once you’ve set that goal, you can then determine what needs to be done to meet that goal and establish smaller goals or tasks to achieve your goal.
Getting Started
To get started, ask yourself:
- Where do you want to be in five years professionally?
- What areas of specialty do you want to focus on within chiropractic?
- What do you hope to gain through a position as an associate, independent contractor, partner or as a practice owner?
- What are your personal and financial goals and how do they fit with your professional aspirations?
By knowing yourself and your goals, you can create a clear vision for your future that will help you stay on track throughout your chiropractic career. It will keep you focused on making career decisions that suit your own needs - not someone else's.
And remember, it’s a good idea to review your goals on a regular basis to determine whether you’ve achieved them and to make any adjustments and establish new goals.