Focus on Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Focus on Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Without goals, you can end up wasting a lot of time in your business. Having goals not only gives you the drive to achieve what you want, but they help you stay focused on the end result.
You need both short and long-term goals. These work together to help guide you in the right direction. The reason that you need both is because long term goals are like a staircase, while short term goals are the individual steps that build it.
You can’t reach long term goals without first achieving some of your smaller goals. For example, if your goal is to have a successful business, you have to achieve things like setting up your website, or getting your content or products ready.
You have to create a buzz for your business or establish social media so that you can connect with potential customers. These are short term goals that will lead you to your long-term ones.
They help show you what to do next. By focusing on the short-term goals, you have a map to follow so that you don’t veer off course. Every time you complete a task, this helps keep you motivated so that you continue to drive forward toward the finish line.
Long term goals are what you want to see happen as a result of the hard work that you put in. These goals act as a finish line and are needed to not only help you build a business, but to help you improve your skills and knowledge, too.
These goals are your guide in that when they’re broken down, you know which short term goals you must have in place first. For example, if you want to create a business teaching people about fitness, you first must have the knowledge in addition to the desire to do so.
This may mean that some of your short-term goals would be to take fitness training courses or to take courses on nutrition. Each short-term goal needs to be a necessary part of your long-term goal.
You want these steps to count so that you don’t get sidetracked. If you wanted to start an online gardening business, you’d want to learn about horticulture, but it would be a waste of time to study anything unrelated to gardening.
If you planned to create your own website and run it in the startup phase, then it would be in line with your long-term goal to study how to do that. Each time you achieve a short-term goal, you take a step forward, but these goals must be defined.
In the beginning, you need to write down what your long-term goals are. Then, taking each of these goals, break them down into your short-term goals or the action steps that you need to take in order to achieve the long-term ones.
What many people find helpful is to decide what the long-term goals are, then break each of the short-term goals down by weeks, months and years. Write down what has to happen weekly, monthly or yearly in order to reach your end goal.
