Are you achieving your professional goals or just going through the motions?

Many of us are guilty of setting goals that we have no chance of achieving. Why do we do this? It's because there is nothing of substance underlying the goals, just passing interests. Because they do not represent something you care about and is of no importance to you or your principles, your subconscious will soon pass them over and move onto something else. However you feel principled to have these 'goals' so you will continue to have them and fail.

I believe because our society, in general, is brought up to fear failure we limit ourselves when it comes to achieving our maxiumum results and performing at our maximum potential in life. For many of our our goals are either not realistic (can blame this if we fail), too easy (highest chance of not failing), not timely (can always point to achieving something in the future) or not important to our lives (you and others will forget you have these goals). In my experience within the white collar world there are those of us that demand more from ourselves everyday and those who simply go through the motions. The first group are driven, have clearly set objectives that relate to their life principles, are organized, are prepared to sacrifice but most important clear their life of useless clutter. They are also top of their game. The second group believe that by getting a job in the white collar world they have achieved something big - their professional lives are controlled by others, they do not truly know what they want, sacrifice little because life is 'pretty good' and completely fall in a pattern of behaviour. Their skill levels are very similar in ten years time because of this. Then times change, as we have seen recently with recent financial and economic upheaval and many of this second group are left stranded - the first group may also go through some difficulty but will always succeed in a fight.

I've studied the existence of both these types of professionals over the past few years and have concluded that the first group is distinct because they (1) know themselves and have a clear reason(s) for what they want (2) are prepared to sacrifice (3) push themselves to be the best in their field and take the steps to ensure their performance is always high (4) do not take failure lightly and will push through adversity (5) have a plan that includes goals and action steps (6) always look to better themselves (7) they have done the research and know what is takes to achieve and (8) manage their time effectively.

I'm undertaking some work for an organization now that at the moment has no real measure of performance or productivity of the company or the indvidual staff - yet management thinks by simply going through the motions of the past ten years everything will be okay. This falls into the second group I was talking about above - thinking they are good enough as professionals because they have certain experience and a qualification. Well wake up guys...times change and skill and knowledge requirements change if you want to achieve in your profession. Fighting a battle with weapons and information of 100 years ago is not going to help you today no matter how strong you were back then. It doesn't matter how hard you work if you do not know what you need to achieve and do not therefore have the skills or knowledge required.

If you don't know (what you need to) and you don't do (what you need to) then you will never achieve.

Look, I'm not talking about earning millions and millions here - my message is about unlocking your potential and to stop wasting our time on this planet. The bottom line is why do something if you don't want to do it at your maximum potential? If you don't then maybe it's time to move onto something else.