Set your goals

You have successfully completed this course. Well done! This course introduced many new terms, new industries and new horizons for your professional development. The previous step also provided ‘actionable next steps’. In this step, you have the opportunity to engage with the material you studied and act accordingly. Knowledge not used is not useful, therefore in this step you have the option to make effective use of what you have learnt to kick-start your career in Robotics.

For each of the questions below, spend some time reflecting on your own professional development.

Is robotics for me? Do I find it exciting?

Perhaps the first question you should clarify in your mind is if robotics is a career you would enjoy. We hope this course brought to your attention the exciting opportunities, challenges, and the impact of robotics on the world. Can you relate? Can you think yourself enjoying working in the robotics arena?

What would be the goal I would like to reach someday?

Now that you know that robotics is something you would want to do, reflect on what goal do you want to set for yourself. This could be anything from ‘getting a well-paid job in robotics as a software engineer’ to something even more specific like ‘become a researcher specialised in machine learning working for company XYZ’. Whatever the goal, simply reflect and identify what that goal looks like. Don’t restrict yourself from thinking big, this is a goal to achieve someday, not tomorrow.

What challenges or obstacles do I anticipate while pursuing this goal?

Every person has weaknesses and limitations. Only you will know this. It would be good to reflect and understand these weaknesses and be proactive working towards improving on those weaknesses. Next you will see a framework for taking next actions, but it would be good to have this reflection about the challenges you anticipate you will hit and consider them while you find the next action.

What’s one thing I could work on right now?

I like the idea of  ‘The One Thing’ which is outlined in the book of the same name by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. Now that you have identified your career goal, it might be beneficial for you to use this framework to find the next thing you should work on to make this ‘someday’ goal a reality! Here how it works.

• Someday: what’s the one thing I want to do someday? You identified this in the previous question when you set your goal.
• Five years: based on my someday goal, what’s the one thing I can do in the next 5 years?
• One year: based on my five-year goal, what’s the one thing I can do in the next year?
• Monthly goal: based on my one-year goal, what’s the one thing I can do in the next month?
• Weekly goal: based on my month goal, what’s the one thing I can do in the next week?
• Daily goal: based on my weekly goal, what’s the one thing I can do in the next day?
• Right now goal: based on my daily goal, what’s the one thing I can do right now?

This framework helps by eliminating the distractions of the day and helps you focus on the one thing to do next to get you to your someday goal.

For example,

• Someday: get a well-paid job in robotics as a software engineer.
• Five years: gain valuable experience with robotics or graduate with a Computer Science (Industrial) degree from the University of Leeds.
• One year:
  • One year you could build a simulated robot picking an object and placing that object elsewhere.
  • One year you could get an internship at [COMPANY NAME] as a software engineer intern.
  • One year you could learn programming in Python, C and C++.
• Monthly:
  • One month you could create a simple Python program which starts up a simulator and loads a robot in.
• Weekly:
  • One week you could study a course on Python programming.
  • Another week you could study a course on using ROS for robot programming.
• Daily goal:
  • One day you could complete the first activity of a course.
  • Another day you could install Linux side-by-side with Windows to start experimenting with ROS on Linux.
• Right now:
  • Right now you could find a good course on Python programming or ROS.
  • etc.

As you can see, the framework goes from something very broad and arbitrary to a funnel that gets more specific. The goal is finding the next thing you can do right now that will move you in the right direction. Your right-now goal gets you to your daily goal, your daily goal gets you to your weekly goal, your weekly goal gets you to your monthly goal, your monthly goal gets you to your one-year goal, your one-year goal gets you to your five-year goal and your five-year goal hopefully gets you to your someday goal!

Consider practising this methodology for some time and see if it works for you. Please make use of the tips provided in the previous step and the useful resources of what to do next.