Setting career goals is hard, especially when it’s time to do it as part of the usual performance review cycle. As I’ve coached my teams through goal-setting, I’ve observed several different reasons why it can be hard to set goals. These reasons include:

• Analysis paralysis. “I could work on any number of things, but which ones are the ‘right’ ones to work on?”
• Future hazy, try again later. “I really don’t know what I want my future to hold, so I’m not sure what goals I should have when I don’t have a three- or five-year plan.”
• Too much happening right now. “I’m already in a period of personal or professional upheaval and I feel like I am only barely holding on. I can’t think about the future because the present is already too much.”
• Impostor syndrome. “I don’t think I’m actually any good at what I do today. I can’t set goals to help me address my perceived deficiencies because that would be revealing to someone else that I’m an impostor.”
• Dreaming about leaving. “I think I want to do something different with my career that isn’t available to me here. I do have goals, but I don’t want to talk about them with you for fear of repercussions.”
• In the zone. “I’m happy with where I am right now. I do not want to get promoted. I just want to come in, successfully do my job, and get paid fairly for that.”
• No role model. “I have no idea how to do this because I’ve never seen anyone do it well. I’ve not really tried to do it myself.”
• No point. “This is just HR bullshit. No one pays attention to my goals. I’m going to write them down today and then no one will look at them again until my next performance review.”

Once you understand the root of what makes writing goals feel difficult, you can use that to help craft the type of goals to set. Here are some strategies to unlock the goal-setting conundrum for the reasons I outlined above:

• Analysis paralysis: You could make finding the “right” focus your goal. To do this, choose one of your potential goals and work on it for a set period of time, up to a month. If you really can’t choose one yourself, ask a friend or colleague to help, or even pick one randomly. At the end of the month, evaluate your progress, how you’re feeling about it, and what impact it has made. If it’s particularly impactful and you’re feeling great about it, you’ve got your goal. If not, you can choose another goal to try for a time boxed period.
• Future hazy, try again later: You could make figuring out what you want to do your goal. Outline a handful of options for what your future might hold. Don’t be afraid to dream big! From there, you could have informational interviews with people who have followed that path to leverage what they learned along the way. Or you could create a payout matrix to help you think through which path you might want to take. You could create a set of experiments to help you decide what you want your future to hold.
• Too much happening right now: Depending on why you have too much going on, you could set a goal to reduce the number of things on your plate. What can you offload so that you’re not so overburdened? If you simply can’t offload things, you could instead set a goal to reflect on your situation and what you’ve learned from it. These types of retrospectives can help you and those around you avoid getting into situations like this, better handle those inevitable times when it feels like everything is going wrong at once, or even simply recognize that this happens and sometimes all you can do is keep on keeping on.
• Impostor syndrome: Setting goals to help overcome impostor syndrome requires vulnerability and support. You have to be vulnerable in admitting that you feel this way, and you have to have support from a good leader who will help you move past it. If you aren’t sure if you’ve got a good leader or you’re not ready to be vulnerable, one way to sidestep this is to leverage your career ladder. Look at the competencies for the next level. They’re probably the same competencies as your current level, but they have broader scope and impact. You can frame your goals in terms of growing to that next level. You could also set a goal about getting in-depth 360-degree feedback from those around you to help you better understand what you’re great at and what you’re not, if that’s not already part of your performance review. That might help you combat your impostor syndrome, or at least help you decide where to focus your energy.
• Dreaming about leaving: This is another one that requires vulnerability and support. If you’re ready to be open that you’re thinking about doing something else, you can set goals to make that decision. If you’re certain that you want to move on, you can set goals that help you and your organization be ready to move on, such as ensuring that you’ve wrapped up a key project and fully documented all of that great knowledge that only lives in your head. If you’re still exploring options, you can follow the strategies above for “future hazy, try again later”.
• In the zone: You could make your goals about cementing your place as a solid contributor. Potential goals include improving documentation, improving processes, or mentoring.
• No role model: Ask others to share their goals with you. Personally, I like sharing my goals with my team so that they can see what I’m working on.
• No point: You can choose to treat this exercise as only an HR exercise, or you can choose to treat this exercise as something that you do for yourself. Setting goals is about your professional growth. You have to reframe the exercise for yourself and not let poor implementations of goal-setting get in your way.

As you’re framing your goals, you can use strategies such as SMART goals to help you create meaningful goals that you can make progress on. After you’ve done that hard work, the next step is to create an accountability structure to help you make progress. I like to set up monthly check-ins on my professional goals with someone such as a manager, a coach, or a colleague. That external accountability helps remind me to invest time in my goals, and reflect on what I’ve learned as I’ve worked on them.