EP 268 Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
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[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Bold Goal Crusher podcast, the podcast where we crush our goals and everything that gets in the way. I'm your host, Sarah Mayer. And today we're going to dive into a topic that's critical for achieving sustained success. And that is balancing short term goals and long term goals.
So whether you're an entrepreneur, a professional, or someone just striving for personal goal growth, finding the right balance between Your immediate objectives and tasks and your future aspirations is not easy. So let's explore how to make that balance effective and easier. So first, let's define what we mean by short term and long term goals.
So short term goals are those you aim to achieve in the near future, typically within a few weeks, a month to a year. And these goals often include tasks and milestones that move you closer to your larger objectives. But long term [00:01:00] goals, on the other hand, those are the ones you aim to achieve over a longer period and many times.
Those are the big things that you really want to accomplish. They're not easy and they may take several years or honestly, even your lifetime. They represent your broader vision and also major achievements and the balance between those 2 types of goals is essential because it ensures that you're making.
Progress, but also keeping your eye on the bigger picture, and I don't want you to get confused because I talk a lot about on here how you need those big, bold goals. And then you need objectives to achieve those goals. That's not what I'm talking about for short term goals. The short term goals are not those objectives that.
Lead to the bigger goals. These are just things that you may have as a short term goal to get done. That's a goal for you, but they're not usually tied to your vision. But this is what gets in the way. Those short term goals that you're doing on an everyday basis or an every week basis are getting away getting in the way of your [00:02:00] long term goal objectives.
So an example of that may be like this month, you want to spend more time with your family. That's not a long term goal for you. It's just you want to do that this month. And so that may get in the way from your big vision, long term goal and the objectives that lead to getting there. All right, and what can happen is when we have too many things on our plate, or we're only concentrating on short term goals, it can result in a lot of frustration and honestly burnout.
So we need to find that balance because otherwise what tends to happen is the long term goals get further and further away from possibility and you're just living in this short term life with it. Quick wins and easy stuff like that. So you want to first start by clarifying your vision. So what is your true long term vision?
What do you want to achieve in the next 3, 5, 10, or even 20 years or your lifetime? This should be [00:03:00] inspiring, compelling and motivating, giving you that real clear direction for your efforts. And I want you to write down your long term goals and keep them somewhere visible. It could be on a vision board. I use, as many of the Clever Fox planner and I make a copy of my vision board inside.
So if you're watching on YouTube, you can see a sneak peek of my vision. If you're not watching on YouTube, you should subscribe. And then what's really important is once you have that long term vision, you need to break it down into smaller, manageable pieces. I call those objectives. These pieces are what you're going to do to achieve that.
And they can be some of your short term goals, but not necessarily. So you want to think about what you need to accomplish in the next week, month, year. Six months or even, the next couple of years to achieve this. And so breaking that down makes it less overwhelming and more achievable. And then you want to [00:04:00] prioritize your goals.
So your long term goals and your short term goals those may be just little things that you want to do in the short term. And this year, they may not tie to your big, bold goal, but you want to re prioritize them. They're not all created equal. So some people will have more significant impact.
Transcribed Some goals will have more significant impact on your progress than others. And you want to prioritize those short term goals. I find many people have too many goals. The reason they don't achieve their legacy goals is because they have all these little short term goals. Like this week. I want to spend more this month.
I want to spend more time with my family. I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to do this and that's chasing the feeling of accomplishment and being productive, but you're really not focusing on what you truly want. And then it's important to create a balanced plan. So your plan needs to incorporate both your short term and long term goal objectives.
The objectives are the things you need to do to achieve the goal. [00:05:00] The plan should outline the steps you need to take and maybe the resources you need, what you need to learn. As well as a timeline. So this balance plan ensures you're making significant progress and also keeping your future aspirations in sight.
So let's talk about flexibility really quick in the balance. You life is unpredictable. We all know that and circumstances can change. So it's critical to stay adaptable. And open to adjusting your goals and plans as needed. Flexibility does allow you to respond, but you don't want to be so flexible that you have no plan or you're not making progress.
So I'll share a personal story about finding balance. Many times the short term goals are easier. And a few years ago, I sent this big long term goal. And it was a daunting task and I knew it would take several years to achieve and to make progress. I broke it [00:06:00] all down. I actually have the goal journal, which if you're watching on YouTube, I published this book, a goal journal driven to succeed and I broke it all down.
But what I found was that many of the tasks that I needed to do to achieve this big goal were not easy. And so it was easier for me to meet my short term goals. than my long term goals. And I was able to make progress every month on the short term goals. However, I wasn't fulfilled because that's not what I truly wanted, and I hadn't made progress on my true bold goal.
So I want you to really think about balancing your short and long term goals. So there are a couple ways to do this. The first one, put time on your calendar for cranking out short term goals and long term goal objectives. Set aside the time to do the thinking, set aside the time to do the reflection on why you're not working on it or what's getting you stuck and why it's so important to you.
All right. [00:07:00] So balancing short and long term goals is key and you know that to achieving sustained success, but it's not easy. So clarify your vision, break down your goals into objectives, really prioritize those so you can make progress while short term goals while keeping your future aspirations in sight.
So thank you for joining me today on the bold goal crusher podcast. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with somebody who might benefit from it as well as don't forget to subscribe on your pod course podcast platform of choice as well as on YouTube so that you can truly crush your goals.
So it's time to get to it. Let's crush your goals and everything that gets in the way so you don't have to work double time.
