How do you set goals you can keep?

If you’re like most successful engineers, setting goals and getting things done for your employer is part of your DNA.

Why, then, do we struggle with setting and achieving our own career goals?

For example, Paula nailed every single deliverable her manager asked of her in the last 12 months. She has great relationships with clients and others in the office and she brought her projects in on time and under budget. She works extremely hard, and it’s showed in her project outcomes. From her manager’s perspective, Paula is on fire and an amazing engineer.

But when I talked to Paula about how she felt about how things were going, she told a different story. She came to me because after all that hard work, she had expected to get a promotion and was feeling frustrated and unappreciated that she didn’t get one. I asked her if getting that promotion this year had been a career goal for her.

Her response: “I hadn’t really thought about it. I just thought it was the next step for me, a reward for putting in that effort and work.”

After some digging, it later turned out that all promotions had been frozen last year, meaning that no one got one. Additionally, it turned out that because Paula hadn’t thought about what she wanted and set career goals accordingly, she’d also never shared her desire for a promotion with anyone.

In this instance, Paula was lucky because all promotions were frozen. I’ve also had engineers come to me in this EXACT situation because someone else got the promotion instead of them.

She is far from the first to find herself in a very disappointing and frustrating situation because she made a fundamental mistake when it came to setting our career goals: she didn’t set them at all (in Paula’s case).

The obvious next logical step is to set some career goals for yourself. As it is currently January, I’d typically recommend setting those goals through the end of the year.

But here’s the rub: Many (if not most) engineers set their career goals wrong.

“But Stephanie”, you might be scoffing, “I know all about setting SMART goals and I’m the type of person that gets things done.”

That’s true. But it’s because you jump right in to the logistics and details of getting a goal done that you’re missing the forest for the trees.

The result: next year will get here and you won’t have achieved your goal.

I’ve done it too and I’ve seen it over and over again. Engineers don’t miss their goals due to lack of work ethic. They miss them because they make 4 common, fundamental mistakes when setting their goals to begin with.

Today, I’m going to share with you 4 reasons your goals aren’t working for you and what you should be doing instead.

The reasons you aren’t meeting your career goals

One trait of most successful engineers I’ve talked to and interviewed over the years is that they set career goals for themselves that aren’t specifically tied to a particular employer or project. Assuming you want to be successful, reflecting on your aspirations (example of an aspiration: I want a promotion) is where you start.

It’s here (at the aspiration stage), that it’s common to begin running into trouble trying to break that aspiration down into a real goal.

Here are the 4 reasons your career goals aren’t working for you, and what you should be doing instead.

#1 You don’t have a real why behind your goals.

I was working on a project where the latest estimate had come in at 20% overbudget. The cost of the materials for the project had skyrocketed due to completely unforeseen world events since we did the previous estimate, which meant my project was now at risk of being shelved. Each team member was tasked with considering where they could better optimize their designs and produce a list of potential value-engineering options that would result in at least a 20% cost reduction for their part of the project.

I spent hours going back through the analysis and cutting a little more material here and there. That barely made a dent in the 20%. Then, as I was looking at a report given to be by another consultant, I noticed some language that gave me an idea. It was a geotechnical report I had used to design the foundations for the project, and there was a sentence that said “Based on the loads provided to me by the structural consultant, these parameters should be used in the design.”

I got curious and asked: “if the loads were different, would the parameters change?” I called the report writer, had a chat with him, and it turns out the parameters would be different, and more importantly, with some very minor modifications to the design we could easily hit the 20% mark just in foundations. The project was back on!

My goal with this project was to cut the costs by 20%, but at first I was asking myself the completely wrong questions, trying to cut a little here and there instead of looking at the bigger picture.

This mistake is one I see all the time when helping engineers and technical women consider their career goals. We are so very good at the details that we often jump right into “How can I do/solve this?” before we’ve considered if we should really be doing it to begin with.

Paula’s situation where she wanted to get a promotion is a classic case. It wasn’t a goal; it was just something she wanted based on what she thought *should* be the next thing.

Another example is deciding that you’re going to get in shape and eat healthier. We are constantly bombarded with unrealistic body images on social media or in advertising, as a result this is often a trendy goal in January every year, based more on what we think we *should* do, rather than something we actually want to do.

We’ve got to stop *should-ing* ourselves to death.

When we set goals based on other people’s expectations – what the “proper” career ladder should be, what a woman’s body should look like, and what we think we should be, we have set ourselves up for failure.

We’ve set ourselves up not to only NOT achieve the goal, but for lower self-esteem and confidence when we try to set future goals.

Instead, BEFORE you set a goal, ask yourself these two questions:

“Why do I want to achieve this outcome?”
“Why does it matter to me?”

#2 The outcome of your goal isn’t within your control.

So, you set yourself a goal of getting a promotion. That’s a great aspiration, but it has to be drilled down to specific things you can do that are within your control. Here is a high-level example based on Paula’s situation of wanting a promotion:

Talk to her supervisor about wanting a promotion, and ask specifically what she needs to do to get one within an agreed-upon timeframe.
Document the things she would need to do based on her discussion and by when. Send a follow-up email to her manager to confirm her understanding.
Make a plan to do the things on the list and start doing them.
Do monthly check-ins with her supervisor to specifically discuss how this plan is going and what she can do better.
Document all the things she has done so they are ready for her performance review.

Is actually getting the promotion within your control? Probably not. There could be unforeseen budget cuts, world economic challenges that result in a recession, and other items (a merger, a new boss, etc.) that are out of your hands.

However, when you focus on only the things you can control and be proactive in the conversations you need to have and the things you need to do to get them done, you’ve exponentially increased your chances of achieving your goals.

#3 You are relying on motivation instead of habit to achieve your goals.

Motivation is fleeting. Our brains only have so much willpower and decision-making capabilities, and when we are stressed or tired, we will always default to our habits.

You can read more about the scientific basis behind this in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. The major takeaway: you CANNOT rely on motivation to achieve your goals. Instead, habits are what make or break your ability to be successful.

What do I mean by that?

If you have a goal that is important to you, you make time for it, and you make it into a habit, so it becomes like brushing your teeth.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you want that promotion. But, you’re an introvert like me and perhaps having that initial discussion with your manager makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, so you KNOW you are going to put off that conversation.

And so it continues…..it hangs over you and you don’t do it, and then finally you decide if you just work harder you’ll eventually get that promotion.

That is a really good way to not just NOT achieve you goals, but to demotivate yourself in the process.

Instead, what if you make working on your goal a habit, something you did the first 15 minutes of every workday?

And during that time, all you do is re-look at the goal you wrote down, and ask yourself: “What is the most important thing I can do in these 15 minutes that will move me towards my goal?”

Maybe it’s drafting an email to your manager requesting a meeting.

Maybe it’s making an outline about what you are going to say in the meeting so you can be comfortable making the request.

You will achieve your goals if you make time to work consistently towards them, even if you’re only spending 15 minutes a day doing so.

#4 You’ve got too many goals.

I have a chronic habit of taking on too much. I used to set many goals at the beginning of every year in all aspects of my life. I thought more goals was better, because who doesn’t want to achieve more?

What I found is that I wasn’t achieving ANY of them at all, because my focus was scattered.

When I changed my goals so that I was focusing on ONE thing at a time before proceeding to the next, I started not just achieving all my goals, but was able to set even more because they got done more quickly.

In the process, that momentum gave me more motivation and confidence to go after the next one.

Pick ONE goal from your list and go for that one first. If you’ve got a bunch of goals, pick the one you’d be most excited about achieving, and start with that one.

Your career is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. You’ve got time. What you don’t have is unlimited energy and focus. That’s why picking the goal that gets you most fired up and getting it done is where to start.

Try this, not that

To recap, here are the four things you’re doing wrong when setting goals and what you should do instead.

Now, if you’ve got your big goal, let me know in the comments! Sharing you goal doesn’t only make it more likely you’ll achieve it, but it inspires and empowers others too!