Long-Term Goal Setting for Engineers

Chris Knutson and I dive into long-term goal setting or vector setting for engineers and give you some actionable steps on how to do it.

The following is a summary of Episode 90 of our podcast, The Engineering Career Coach (TECC) Podcast. You can also listen to the show through the player below, the website, or by subscribing on iTunes.

Chris Knutson and I dive into long-term goal setting or vector setting for engineers and give you some actionable steps on how to do it.

Key points:

The best way to shape the future of your engineering career is to design it.  Here is a summary of this episode which can help you to design your ideal career.

A vision is a statement of what future success looks like and is not tied to a timeframe (the question of why).

5 Steps for Bringing Future Predictions into Existence

  • Write down your single vision/project
  • Rule of 1% – setting time aside to work on it everyday
  • Do what you need to do to bring those visions/projects to existence
  • Set some milestone that can be reasonably met (create a dashboard)
  • Be flexible about changing your vision, mission, or goal as it unfolds

5 Steps to Blueprint Your Lifestyle 

  • Concept Development – define the concept of what you want to do
  • Preliminary Design – identify what’s required to actually do it
  • Design Review – review your preliminary design developed in the preceding week
  • Final Design – commit your goal’s accomplishment to paper again, with milestone and target completion dates
  • Execute and Adjust – take action on your goal and adjust as needed

Have you started your long-term vector setting?

Anthony Fasano, PE, author of Engineer Your Own Success, found success as an engineer at a very early age and now writes and podcasts to help other engineers do the same. Visit Anthony’s website at EngineeringCareerCoach.com to access all of the free engineering career resources he has created to help engineers succeed.