Your goals are the measurable objectives you must attain to fulfill your mission and purpose and realize your vision. They are the targets you aim at. What are your goals for your work and career?

Your goals must be clear, written, and specific. They must be believable and achievable. They must be accompanied by written plans and schedules for their accomplishment. You must work on them every day.

Each goal must include performance measures, or bench-marks. These numbers allow you to clearly determine whether you are moving closer to your goals or further away.

A performance measure is a key number of some kind that gives you an indication of performance or effectiveness in a particular area. In every part of your life, you need these measures to evaluate how well you are doing. Your measures serve as scorecards to indicate success or failure in your activities. The choice of a specific standard of performance becomes a primary focal point for your career.

One obvious measure, or focal point, is the amount you earn each year. Another is the rate of increase in your pay, year by year. A measure could be how often you have been promoted in the last two years. Another could be your percentile ranking in comparison with others in your field.

Many self-employed professionals use their hourly rate as the critical success factor by which they evaluate their performance and effectiveness. The amount they earn per hour, and how often they earn that amount, is a summary indicator of how well they are doing in many other parts of their careers.

What are your key standards of performance for your work? How do you measure your success on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis?  When you set clear goals for yourself, you should write them down, make plans to achieve them, and work on them every day. Be sure that you have a clear measure of your progress that you can refer to regularly. This becomes your focal point. This is where you mark the "X" in your work life.