Setting Short-Term Goals for Long-Term Success

Do you have something big in the cross-hairs; do you have your heat or mind set on a big goal? If you do, then that’s fantastic. After all, if you want to make it big in life, you have to dream big to begin with, but what you may not know, is that dream big, but think small. I know this may sound strange, but research has proven many times over that you have more chance of achieving a big goal is you set yourself multiple smaller goals along the way which are very achievable.

Short-Term Goals

They Help to Unleash your Motivation

When you go about setting short-term goals, you need to question yourself with regard to your goal. Perhaps you want to lose weight in time for a long-awaited family location, but stop and ask yourself why this is so important to you. Maybe it’s important because you want to take part in certain activities with your children, but again, ask yourself why it’s so important. Perhaps you want to ensure that your kids will one day have very fond memories of you, and this may well be important to you because you have rarely had the chance to go on vacation with your family.

Carry on repeating this exercise until you have identified the most genuine; the most real, and the most accurate reason behind your goal. Now that you have identified the key reason behind your goal, you can go ahead and begin setting achievable short-term goals that build on the reason you have just established. This helps to drive your motivation, and without it, you will have less chance of achieving your big goal, which in this case is weight loss.

They Help to Create a Unobstructed Road to Success

Having several achievable small goals in place will help you to focus on what you have to achieve on a weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis in order to achieve that big goal you have. It’s always wonderful to set yourself a big long-term goal, but how are you going to get there if you lack proper guidance?

Let’s say you want to 10,000 meters in less than one hour. Your goal is beautifully clear and very specific, but to increase your chance of getting there, you need to set a number of smaller goals that can help you to reach the big one. For instance, your first small goal could be to run 2,500 meters in less than 15 minutes, and the following goal could be to run 5,000 meters in less than 30 minutes.

They Allow You to Monitor Your Progress

Before you can even compete in a race, you need to know where the starting line is. In that respect, knowing where the start line is, is just as important as knowing where the finishing line is. The exact same principle applies when it comes to achieving your goals.

In the example above, finding your starting line could be as easy as timing yourself while running 2,500 meters. The time you take to complete 2,500 meters can then act as the start line, and then you can set a number of small goals accordingly. For example, if it took you 19 minutes to run 2,500 meters, you know you need to reduce that time by at least 4 minutes, so your first small goal could be to reduce that initial time by 2 minutes, with the next goal being 4 minutes. In short, small goals help to show you if you are in fact gaining ground in your race for the big goal.

They Help with Self-Accountability

Let’s say you want to lose weight, and your small incremental goals require you to lose at least two pounds every month until you reach your big goal. Now, when the end of the month arrives and you discover that you have not lost any weight at all, or that you may even have gained some weight, then you will need to take a good hard look at yourself because obviously you are doing something wrong.

There’s no need to punish yourself because everyone slips off the rails from time to time, but, if you fail to achieve one of your small goal which you know are achievable, then you need to analyze your situation; you need to hold yourself accountable.

They Help You to Remain Focused

One of the biggest challenges of big long-term challenges is the fact that those goals often seem to be so far away, so distant. When you only focus on your big goal which might be a year or more away, it is all too easy to put things off; to delay your progress because it feels as though you still have so much time in which to achieve that goal. It’s so easy to keep postponing things, whereas with short-term goals, you aren’t allowing yourself much time to procrastinate.

Short-term interim goals are much like the different events in a triathlon. Each time you complete one stage, it is exhilarating and you want to celebrate but you only have enough time for a quick pat on your back because you immediately have to tackle the next stage of the race.

So, how about you? Are you successfully moving closer to your desired level of fitness; your desired weight; your desired career opportunity? Are you setting yourself short-term goals to secure short-term wins that will help you to achieve that big goal waiting at the end of the tunnel?