Short vs. Long Term Goals (How to Set Them and The Crucial Difference Between Them Both)

If you want to live an enjoyable and fulfilling life, simply “doing things” and hoping to achieve them is not enough.

There’s been many approaches to achieving things in your life, but knowing where you are right now and where you want to be is often the easiest and most pragmatic way to achieving those things.

While many of the objectives that people have often are often further away, the process to achieving those things often requires a combination of short and long term goals.

This article is going to show you how to set both while providing a mindset so you can achieve things faster, easier, and with less stress and confusion.

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What is Goal Setting? Why is it Important?

“Nearly everyone hopes. We dream about where we would like to be, what kind of place we would be living in, who would be nearby…Furthermore we’re all aware of obstacles between ourselves and achieving those dreams. Often the major obstacle is ourselves.“ – David Reynolds, Constructive Living

When people think of “goals”, they often think of some big “thing” in some far off destination in the future where “things make sense” often at the end of a long time period of hard work and struggling.

While this does happen, this is more often than not – fantasy.

Just because you have an idea in your head means it will happen, especially if you don’t know the first direction you should take.

Think of your goals like an archery target. You are the archer. The target allows you to aim and fire. Over and over and over. Now imagine that that archery target wasn’t there. Well, you would have nowhere to aim at. You would just be wandering in the woods not even firing arrows or even better, just shooting arrows in the distance for fun. Sadly, this is the fate of many people.

Many people simply don’t have a direction to aim at and as a result – go around “shooting blanks” for most of, if not all of their life.

In reality, you are always “setting goals” because the human being is a teleological organism. You are always working towards some end, whether you realize it or not. So why not make it purposeful? Setting short and long-term goals is how you make it purposeful.

What is a Short-Term Goal?

You see, setting goals is an active process. Therefore, it requires constantly shifting priorities and even resources to achieve certain ends. Setting a short-term goal helps you achieve those certain ends faster.

A short-term goal is an objective or end state that can be achieved with relatively minimal time or even effort. Short-term goals are often metric-driven and require hitting objectives in order to unlock the next stage of a longer term result.

What is the Timeline of a Short-Term Goal?

A short-term goal timeline definition is relative. To some, 6 months may be “short”, to others it may be “long”. But generally most people believe that a short term goal is anywhere from 1 week to 3 months. Anything shorter than that is just a “task” and anything longer is a long-term goal.

What are Some Examples of Short-Term Goals?

Some examples include:

Learning a song on the guitar
Writing a paper for school
Losing or gaining .5 lbs/.45 kg a week
Reading a book on a new skill or area of development

All of these are connected to longer term end goals and without them, long-term goal achievement would be impossible.

What is a Long-Term Goal?

A long-term goal is something usually big and has moderate to major consequences for completion. A long-term goal is usually the systematic chaining together of several short-term goals. Long-term goals can themselves be “short-term” building blocks for other longer term goals. Long-term goals often require great allocations of time, money, and or energy to achieve.

What is the Timeline of a Long-Term Goal?

Again, the timeline for this is relative, but most people believe that long-term goals are anything from 6 months to 10+ years.

What are Some Examples of Long-Term Goals?

Some examples include:

Graduating from undergrad or graduate school
Getting your “dream job”
Running an Ironman
Rising to the top of your field and being a mentor for new entrants to that field

While some long-term goals may take years or maybe even your entire life, many long-term goals are perfectly achievable in reasonable time frames with the right levels of focus and/or motivation.

The Relationship Between Goals, Energy Levels, and Limitations

It’s no secret that some goals are relatively easier to achieve than others. This is often because of a complex matrix of factors, all of which create the “circumstances” for goal achievement or lack thereof. The most common factors are energy levels and available resources.

Goals require a certain amount of energy to complete. If that energy isn’t there, that goal’s not happening. Think of it like lighting a match. You need a certain amount of force to light the match. If the force isn’t there, the match isn’t getting lit. You’re the same way. If the initial motivation or focus isn’t there, the goal won’t be started or even achieved. This is especially the case for long-term goals.

Lots of people know that you need a certain level of “juice” to achieve goals, but what’s easily overlooked is inherent limitations. Sometimes this may be the lack of available resources – especially in a resource deprived environment. If you live in the middle of a war-torn country, getting a graduate degree from a top university is out of reach to you or may not even be on your radar. Another limitation may be ignorance (not in terms of being “stupid” but in terms of lack of knowledge). You may not even know that a goal is important to your life, so you just might not set it. Or, you may be lacking the knowledge needed to get that goal started or finish it.

All of these factors will determine what goals you will/can set and whether you can achieve them. If you can remove the barriers for these goals, then you’re on your way to achieving a lot of things.

The Best Way to Set (and Achieve) Short and Long-Term Goals

The best way to set goals will always be through a layered approach. You set and achieve goals hour by hour, day by day, and month by month. Therefore, you ensure you use short-term goals as a way to achieve long-term ones.

For short-term goals, you focus on hitting reasonable metrics all in the attempt to create a “runway” for the next series of things in that goal to get started.

Then, you’ll want to ensure that your system and structure is as airtight as possible to achieve that goal, especially achieving it on schedule. This is a combination of self-discipline, time management, energy management, and using all available resources to help towards goal achievement. This goes very deep and is beyond the topic of just “setting goals” but it is important to keep in mind.

It’s also worth asking these questions:

How can I achieve this goal faster?
What’s going to slow me down from achieving this goal?
Who’s help do I need to achieve this goal?
What resources do I currently have to achieve this goal? If I don’t have the resources, where can I get them?

Let’s take this example:

You want to gain muscle mass. A reasonable goal is gaining .5 lbs/.2 kg a week. This would equate to 2 lbs/.9 kg a month or 24 lbs/10.8 kg a year. In order to gain this muscle mass, you need to set a short term goal of lifting more weight in the gym week by week. Do you need a trainer to help you get started or keep you motivated?

You may also need to set a short term goal of eating a specific number of calories per day or per week. Do you know what foods you should eat?

Then of course comes the need for consistency. How are you going to maintain consistency in the midst of a busy schedule?

This all needs to be considered.

Eventually, at the end of the 12 month period, you would have achieved that longer term goal of gaining 24 lbs or not. If not, you focus on what happened and readjust from there.

Conclusion + Wrapping Up

Success equals goals; all else is commentary. – Brian Tracy

Life is a series of things that come after each other. These things can just be “random events” or they can be “events that lead to other events”. Almost everyone wants the latter, but the former is more common.

Many people don’t set goals and choose to just “wing it”, but any success achieved willy nilly will often not be replicable or repeatable, as in — just a one hit wonder. There’s a reason why most lottery winners go broke after just 3-5 years.

Success is not an accident, it is an intentional construction – a latticework of short and long-term goals together to create an achievement or collection of achievements

After you read this, write down what you want to achieve for the next certain period of time. It can be a week, a month, the next quarter, whatever. Then, write down ways to achieve it and constraints and limitations on achieving it. This will help you start to visualize what is needed for success in certain realms and will get the wheels turning in your head on how to achieve that success and how soon.

Do you have a series of goals you refer to? If so, what are they? How do you plan on achieving them? Let me know in the comments.