A mission statement, if thoughtfully written, can help you to navigate the many opportunities that present themselves over the course of your career, says Chris Torbay, creative director of Yield Branding in Toronto.

By asking yourself, “what am I trying to achieve here,” Torbay says, you can focus on pursuing goals that reflect the strength and originality of your practice. Your mission statement will then act as a guiding principle that you can convey easily in your communications with clients.

Here are three tips for writing a mission statement:

1. Keep it short
To boost your creativity, try to use fewer words, Torbay says. A smaller word count will force you to keep reworking your mission statement until you reach a profound and simplified way of expressing your goals.

“That’s why Twitter works,” Torbay says. “People who would ordinarily ramble on are limited to 140 characters. It makes you stop and think: how can I say this in the cleanest way possible?”

2. Be specific
“The biggest mistake people make is that their mission statements are too aspirational,” Torbay says.

Your mission statement should be an authentic representation of your business’s strengths, character and offering.

“Don’t base your mission statement on what you wish your business is, but simply isn’t,” Torbay says. Instead, your statement should come from an honest examination of how you have differentiated yourself within your market.

Save the lofty goals for your vision statement.

3. Think of the “big picture”
Finding a mission statement you can rally around is actually part of a larger marketing and communications process, Torbay says. Changing your mission statement alone isn’t going to overhaul your business.

The process of developing this important component of your business presents an opportunity to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, determine your competitive advantage and identify your target market, Torbay says. When you understand your mission statement in the larger context of your business, you can connect it to all the channels of your practice.

Follow @LeahGolob on Twitter.