Planning for Your Future With Long-Term Goals

Employees everywhere are constantly striving for achievement and a sense of accomplishment. Long-term goals are the driving force behind those efforts. Long-term goals are a frequent point of questioning in many situations, from job interviews to family reunions, and even first dates. This is largely because they give a clear sense of who you are, where you are going, and where your values lie.  

Long-term goals are your vision for the future and are your definition of what success in life looks like. So, what exactly is a long-term goal?  

Defining Long-term goals 

Long-term goals are the targets you are aiming to achieve further into the future, usually on a timeframe by the end of a calendar year or even several years. They require a great deal of time and planning in order to eventually reach, and often involve multiple steps and the completion of smaller, short-term goals along the way. 

Any accomplishment that will take significant time, effort, and planning to achieve, can be considered a long-term goal. They can be the delayed-gratification outcome of years of focus and can be as practical as saving up for your child’s college fund, or as abstract as leaving a legacy for future generations in your line of work. Rather than short-term goals, which focus on shorter time frames and involve more manageable and immediate action steps, long-term goal planning requires you to investigate the specific habits and actions that will systematically move you towards your guiding objective.  

Here are some examples of long-term goals you can set for yourself in various areas of your life. 

Long-Term Health and Fitness Goals 

• Complete a triathlon. 
• Lower your cholesterol levels. 
• Live a healthy life so you can play with your grandkids. 
• Lose 20 pounds in a healthy way and keep it off for good. 

Long-Term Financial Goals 

• Plan and save up for your retirement. 
• Purchase your own property. 
• Secure and maintain a good credit score. 
• Set aside money for your child’s education. 

Long-Term Personal Goals 

• Found a non-profit organization. 
• Travel to 5 different places to learn more about their culture. 
• Become known for your craft or hobby. 
• Leave a lasting positive legacy. 

Long-Term Learning Goals 

• Obtain a new degree. 
• Master a musical instrument. 
• Learn to speak a foreign language like a native speaker. 
• Obtain an in-depth understanding of a different culture by living abroad. 

Long-Term Career Goals 

• Gain experience in a leadership role. 
• Improve your work performance. 
• Get hired for your dream job or promoted into your dream role. 
• Increase your earnings. 
• Become a mentor for other employees. 

Setting and Achieving Your Long-Term Goals 

The Benefits of Long-Term Goals 

Having, and eventually achieving, good long-term goals holds a myriad of life-long rewards. Some of the greatest advantages include: 

• A Sense of Direction. Having clear and specific long-term goals keeps us headed in the right direction and focused on where we really want to end up. Staying true to your long-term aspirations helps you to avoid ending up somewhere where outside circumstances might have led you. 

• A Sense of Purpose. Long-term goals give meaning to most tasks that would otherwise be considered mundane. When we wake up early in the morning, head into work, and spend 8 hours in the office, we are not doing it simply for the satisfaction of returning home and relaxing in front of the TV. We ideally commit ourselves to that routine because we have something greater to look forward to. We have something that fires us up, that has the potential to nourish our personal and professional lives.  

• A Clearer Understanding of Possible Obstacles. When we have a clear direction of where we are hoping to head in life, and in our careers, we are much better equipped for the journey. With strong long-term goals at the forefront of our progress mapping, it becomes easier to anticipate and avoid possible setbacks, and to recognize the skills that are necessary for success.  

• A Long-Term Positive Impact. Short-term goals provide us with the immediate gratification, and needed reassurance, that we need to keep momentum, but that positive effect is ultimately short-lived. Long-term goals are the thing we are working towards, and those smaller bouts of success are merely the steppingstones to the greater one we are hoping to achieve. Long-term goals may be more challenging to reach, but their impact is far more impactful and ultimately yield greater satisfaction. 

Steps to Setting Long-Term Goals for Your Future 

Whether you are setting out to accomplish something great in your personal, professional, spiritual, financial, or educational life, the steps to setting smart and resilient long-term goals remain the same.  

1. Create a compelling vision. 

The driving factor behind someone’s long-term goals is their vision of their ideal future. Before choosing a long-term goal, you want to work towards, ask yourself what you want your life to look like in 5- or 10-years’ time. Where do you want to be living? What kind of work do you want to be doing? How are you spending your free time? Who are you spending it with? 

Envision these outcomes for yourself and reflect on which one truly inspires you. Follow your intuition and determine whether they are things you truly want to pursue or are simply things you think would want to acquire, such as a house, car, etc. For example, you can imagine yourself as the head of your department, working for a large, multi-million-dollar corporation. This may be appealing, but it would involve a sacrifice of free time, and the responsibility of dealing with interpersonal conflicts in your team. 

Determining the vision of your future that appeals to you most, and figuring out whether you are ready and willing to do the work and make the sacrifices to get there, is the first step to determining the long-term goal that will keep you driven and motivated in the years of effort to come. You know you are on the right track when you can accept both the compelling components, and the responsibility levels, that will come from accomplishing your goal.  

2. Identify one long-term goal. 

Almost everyone can identify several areas in their life that they want to improve upon. The key to setting a great long-term goal is recognizing that a singular pursuit is as pointless as no pursuit at all. You will not feel fully satisfied if you only look to excel in one specific area of your life – you need to find a balance between your personal and professional lives.  

3. Break that long-term goal into smaller, more manageable chunks. 

As we have already discussed, long-term goals may be the most meaningful and gratifying, but they are also sometimes so distant, motivation can wane. Maintaining a positive attitude and staying focused on reaching them can be difficult when your timespan for completion spans over several years. The best way to prevent this is to break your long-term goal into smaller short-term objectives that take shorter amounts of time to complete. Where necessary, you can even break those objectives into smaller steps that can be completed in just a few days’ or weeks’ time. This deconstruction of your progress towards a long-term goal is what is called an action plan. 

4. Take the first step.  

Once you have outlined your plan of action towards achieving your long-term aspiration, all you have left to do is to get started on the very first. Set a realistic deadline for the first small task you have identified, and get it done. Celebrate your accomplishments, then move on to the next step, continuing until, eventually, you have reached what you set out to do in the very beginning.  

Final Thoughts 

Goal setting, especially in a business context, will always be critical to achieving and maintaining success. It gives us a purpose to start our days and try our best in all our work efforts. Monitoring progress on long-term goals can even be streamlined and leveraged in a way that drives accountability, transparency, and the best results possible for your company. SpriggHR offers Goal Tracking software that drives those results, aligning employee goals with the longer-term objectives of your company, ensuring all actions and tasks undertaken by your team members plays a critical and integral role on the path towards success.  

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Short-Term Goals & the Benefits of Quick Wins

When it comes to achieving personal and professional success, one of the most underrated yet powerful tools are short-term goals. Despite their profound effect on the progress that employees make towards their professional aspirations, few even know how to recognize one, let alone how to set one effectively. 

If goals are our vision of an ideal future that we hope to eventually reach for ourselves, then we need to have a thorough understanding of, and a refined focus on, short-term goals. 

What are Short-term goals? 

Any goal you set can be designated as either short-term or long-term depending on the timeline that you plan to achieve it under. While long term goals usually have a timeframe of one to several years, short-term goals can be defined as the actions that you plan to accomplish in a shorter amount of time. This could range from hours, days, weeks and up to months. The critical distinction is that a short-term goal is an outcome that you want to achieve in 12 months or less. 

Short-term goals are usually the building blocks for long term goals and are sometimes referred to as proximal goals. For instance, your longer-term goal may be to start your own business, so your short-term goals could be smaller steps working towards that aspiration, such as registering your business name by the end of the month, applying for loans before three months have passed, seek out business partners or potential talent before the year ends, and so on. Because of this, short-term goals tend to be easier to accomplish, simply because they focus on the immediate future with more manageable tasks involved in their completion.  

The Benefits of Setting and Achieving Short-term goals 

The secret to achieving most of your objectives, whether personal, financial, or professional, is to establish shorter-term desires that are relevant, achievable, easy to measure, and time sensitive. 

If you are looking to improve yourself in some way, you should establish a plan and break it into smaller sections so you can work towards realizing it. Short-term goals are the tools you can use to help you see where you are going along the way, so you don’t get derailed before you can accomplish what is it you have set out to do. Some specific benefits of setting and achieving short-term goals include: 

1. Improved Focus

Short-term goals help you maintain focus on the path you have set out towards achieving your longer-term target. When you have a shorter action plan, you don’t get distracted or confused on how the goal is progressing. Rather, you can direct most of your focus on the daily/weekly/monthly plan and ensure each of those smaller steps towards the larger objective is completed to the best of your ability. 

2. Provide Clarity to Your Overall Plan

Dividing your longer-term aspiration into shorter targets helps you to maintain a consistent and clear understanding of what your overall objective is. When a specific long-term goal is unpacked, and you have a plan of action for reaching it by working your way through the shorter and more manageable action steps, you can address any gaps or issues in your process much more readily and reach your longer-term desire much more efficiently. 

3. They Combat Procrastination

No one is immune to the habit of procrastination, though some may find that they fall into the trap more often when it comes to tackling long-term goals, which can seem daunting and unmanageable even to the most experienced employee. Setting short-term goals is one of the best ways to overcome that challenge, largely due to the specific and short deadlines that accompany them. For example, if your long-term goal is to get fit in one year, setting out to accomplish that only with your end goal in mind can make you lose motivation very quickly. Instead, you can commit to exercising for 15 minutes every day for the next month, and then decide your personal mission for the following month, and so on.  

4. Gain Insightful Feedback

The instant and insightful feedback you can gain from completing short-term goals is one of their most valuable assets. Rather than banking on the success of your long-term goal, and investing long amounts of time without a clear understanding of whether your efforts will eventually pay off, short-term goals provide you with consistent updates on your progress and can help draw attention to any obstacles that are preventing you from reaching your long-term objective faster. 

Making Your Short-Term Goals S.M.A.R.T(ER) 

An often-heard criteria for the setting of goals is the S.M.A.R.T (ER) acronym, a memory-aid for the seven features you should aim to build into every goal you set. There are various ways to define these parameters, but S.M.A.R.T(ER) goals are generally understood to be: 

• Simple – an outsider should be able to understand your goal without further explanation. 
• Measurable – your goal is trackable, either with simple Y/N or clear units of measurement. 
• Actionable – the goal begins with a verb that directs the action (e.g. do, read, learn, etc.); 
• Realistic – the goal is practical and achievable, and if not, then you have broken it down further or set a process goal. 
• Time–Bound – the timeframe of the goal is clearly defined and achievable (e.g. a weekly goal should be doable within 7 days, a monthly goal within 30 days, etc.) 
• Exciting – you have laid out methods to inspire and motivate yourself to finish the goal; and 
• Relevant – the goal is always tied back directly to your bigger-picture thinking and projects. 

If there are projects or goals in parts of your life that you tend to avoid, or that no matter how much effort you put in you don’t see substantial progress in, then there is a good chance some of your steps are missing one or more of these attributes. Aim to measure up every goal you set, whether short-term or long-term, against these standards, and the success rate of your achievement of them will increase tenfold. 

Achievable and S.M.A.R.T Short Terms Goals  

Some examples of short-term goals that meet the S.M.A.R.T criteria, and are achievable and beneficial to several areas of your life, include: 

Short-Term Personal Goals 

• Work on a gratitude journal every night for one week. 
• Read at least one book per month. 
• Donate to charity once a month for four months. 
• Complete a personal improvement course in one month. 
• Turn off all devices by 10pm each night for two weeks. 
• Start a garden within a week and tend to it daily for two months. 

Short-Term Financial Goals 

• Set up a savings account this month. 
• Reduce or eliminate your credit card debt by the end of the year. 
• Start tracking your budget this month. 
• Save 10% of your income each month towards emergencies. 
• Consult a financial advisor within two weeks. 
• Download an app for monitoring daily expenditure this evening. 

Short-Term Fitness Goals 

• Exercise in the gym for three days each week, from 7pm to 9pm. 
• Cut off caffeine and drink water instead for one month. 
• Purchase workout gear by the end of the week. 
• Do a 30-minute yoga session every Sunday. 
• Avoid eating out and restaurants and fast food places for two weeks.  
• Measure your weight every three weeks. 

Short-Term Career Goals 

• Finish a relevant online course every two months. 
• Attend an online job conference or business convention within 60 days. 
• Report to (or log into) your workplace or meeting 10 minutes earlier than usual for one month.  
• Keep your workstation organized and declutter it every Friday for one month.  
• Earn a professional certificate by the end of the year. 

Measuring and Tracking Short-term goal Progress 

 While some may have a clear understanding of what the organization’s longer-term objectives are, and some may have established personal career goals that improve their own work efforts, managing and tracking the progress towards company results can be difficult for many leaders. Sprigg offers a seamless solution, providing software that helps establish performance expectations through best-practice processes like S.M.A.R.T Goal Setting, or using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).  

Sprigg’s goal-setting process helps you develop a clear picture between employee short-term goals, aligning all objectives to the key organizational results and measuring them against clear business metrics. It also streamlines the tracking and measurement of progress, where the percentage of goal completion can be viewed through the dashboard or real-time update requests.  

By transforming your organization’s approach to goal setting, whether short-term or long-term, you are bound to see results that will drive your business towards success. Goal alignment increases employee engagement and improves short-term results, transparency in progress sets clear standards of accountability and ownership, and shorter-term objective results provide valuable, real-time feedback that engages your team and drives better results.  

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KPI vs OKR – What’s the difference? 

In order for a business to be – and remain – successful, it must be constantly improving. Whether by hiring and training new team members, implementing new strategies, or achieving goals and targets, the only way to stay relevant is to adapt – and to adapt, you must have a plan for the future. This is where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) come into play. The KPI vs OKR comparison is one that is frequently made, so it’s worth understanding how to use both. 

What is a KPI? 

As mentioned above, KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators. This term is used to refer to all the statistics one would measure in order to gauge how well a specific organization or project is doing. They can be implemented in order to measure things such as social media metrics, sales goals, call response rates, and more.  

An important aspect to note pertaining to KPIs is that each business will need to tailor them to their own needs. Merely taking another business’s KPI model and implementing it will likely fail, as they will have different objectives than you. KPIs should not only reflect these objectives, but also the steps you plan on taking to achieve them, and who will be using this information. 

Let’s look at an example. Say your KPI is meant to measure the percentage of missed calls from your customer service team. It might look like this: 

KPI for Missed-call Percentage 

• Goal: Keep missed-call percentages below 10% 
• Result: More customers will be answered, leading to more profit 
• Steps to achieve this: Scheduling additional CSRs to be on the phones, rewarding lowest percentage, etc. 
• Who is responsible: The CSR Manager will be responsible for monitoring this  
• Review: How often/when will the status of this project be reviewed 

How does this compare to an OKR? Where does this leave us in the KPI vs OKR debate? Let’s talk about OKRs before we get into the comparison. 

What is an OKR? 

Objectives and Key Results are basically what they sound like: a goal is established, and indicators as to whether the team has made progress are reviewed. OKRs are typically used to outline aggressive goals – not unreachable, but ones that will push the team to work hard towards achieving them. They are usually quarterly goals, but can be used for annual planning as well. 

OKRs can be set at a company, team, or even an individual level. They are comprised of three parts – the objective, the key results, and the initiatives. Let’s see an example of a team OKR: 

OKR for Customer Service 

• Objective: this is where you want to get to/what you want to accomplish. For this example, your objective might be to improve feedback on customer service team. 
• Key Results: these are how you know you’re getting to your goal. In this case, some might be increase net promoter score (NPS) from 65 to 75, get 100 five-star reviews, have satisfaction ratings be above 90%, etc. 
• Initiatives: this is how you will get to your goal. For example: add a live chat option, hire more staff to answer phones, implement new training, etc. 

An individual-based OKR would aim for slightly smaller goals, yet still aggressive for just one person. One example could be: 

OKR for Individual 

• Objective: Increase your presence on social media 

• Key results: Get 100 Facebook ‘likes’ per week, have 10 new people subscribe to your YouTube channel each day, be retweeted 15 times per tweet, etc. 
• Initiatives: Post to FB at least once per day, put out two new videos each week, schedule tweets every two hours, etc. 

Now that both strategies are defined, let’s take a look at how KPI vs OKR methods compare. 

KPI vs OKR – What are the differences & which should I use?

While both KPIs and OKRs are strategies used in goal setting, they do have their differences. As illustrated above, KPIs are used to measure the metrics of programs, activities, etc. that are already in place, and have very achievable goals. OKRs deal with much more aggressively monitored, ambitious objectives – the ultimate goal, so to speak. If a business is looking at the larger picture and attempting to change direction, OKRs will get them there.  

As to the question of which to use, the answer is both. As mentioned, KPIs and OKRs are used in different situations. When making action plans towards a goal, each situation should be analyzed in order to determine which strategy is more viable. If it’s a process that is already in progress, or has been done before, a KPI is likely suitable in order to improve upon it. If it is a bold new idea, with large goals that require progress-tracking or an entire change of direction for the company, an OKR is the way to go. 

Despite their differences, a KPI vs OKR mentality need not be applied. KPIs and OKRs don’t have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, KPIs that need improvement often can become a Key Result in an OKR. Let’s take a look at the example from above: 

KPI for Missed-calls percentage 

• Goal: Keep missed-call percentages below 10% 

This is all well and good as long as the percentages meet the target, but what if they’re stuck at a 15% missed-call rate? This could be indicative of a larger problem, which requires an OKR. For example: 

OKR for Customer Service 

• Objective: Improve overall customer service efficiency 
• Key result(s): Keep missed-call percentages below 10% 

So now the KPI that needed improvement has become a Key Result in the OKR to address the larger goal – improving customer service over all. 

Importance of Review

Regardless of whether your specific goal requires a KPI or an OKR, it is very important to implement processes that will measure and continually review performance. Monitored progress with regular task reviews that track performance deliver the most successful results. 

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How to Write SMART Goals

A Simple SMART Goals Worksheet

Following the SMART Goal process helps to really nail down an exact course of action, even in the case of individual or personal development goals. 

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SMART Goals in Practice 

You know what’s even easier than using a worksheet or template to set SMART Goals? Using a performance management platform with built in SMART Goal setting assistance! 

Sprigg helps you set SMART Goals that align with corporate objectives and offers an easy way to track the progress of all of your goals, whether they are individual or team oriented! 

There's an easier way...

Do you know what’s even easier than scouring the internet for appraisal comments and thought starters? Having them built in to your performance management platform!  

Sprigg comes equipped with a variety of appraisal comment banks, thought starters, and questions that can be used to kick start a performance review. You’ll find helpful phrases not only for managers and leaders, but for employees too! 

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Are OKRs the New SMART Objectives?

By: David Creelman

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