The importance of setting short-term goals (with examples)

We all have goals, both at work and in our personal lives. Buy a house, start a new company, manage a team—the list could go on. Now consider those above statements: Are they actionable goals, or are they just a general dream you hope to achieve? In this article, we'll discuss how you can set good goals to help you with both personal and professional development.

Whether it’s launching a new product with your team, building your dream house, or achieving your big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs), it's easy to feel overwhelmed when your goal is a large, ambiguous idea. Setting short-term goals can help you reach larger objectives and make progress towards your desired outcome.

What is a short-term goal?

A short-term goal is a goal that you want to complete in the near future, such as within the next week or the next month. These are often stepping stones towards larger goals, though not always. You can also use short-term goals to take action on smaller projects or ideas. As a result, short-term goals tend to be easier to achieve. 

What are the benefits of setting short-term goals?

Short-term goals can be used to break down larger, more general goals. They don’t replace these big, overarching goals but rather give you a path to achieve them.

Setting and working on short-term goals helps you:

• Realize what you can accomplish today and take action

• Get quick feedback

• Get started faster

• Define deadlines

• Manage and prioritize tasks 

The difference between short-term goals and long-term goals

A long-term goal is your North Star. It’s the bigger objective that you want to achieve. Short-term goals are different. They focus on a smaller portion of work in a shorter time frame. By breaking a larger, long-term goal into many short-term goals, you can prevent procrastination and stay focused on the task at hand. 

Let's look at an example of a long-term goal that has smaller short-term goals built into the action plan.

• Long-term goal: A sales team is looking to close $500,000 in new sales in the next year. 

• Short-term goal: The small- and medium-sized sales team wants to close $50,000 in new sales in Q1.

You could then break the short-term goal down into even smaller, more specific goals assigned to each sales representative. For example, Areej will aim to close $8,000 in new sales during each month of the quarter.

30 short-term goals examples

When it comes to setting short-term goals, it's important to think about specific, attainable steps that can lead to larger accomplishments. These goals should be time-bound, measurable, and clearly aligned with your long-term goals.

Whether you're focusing on areas of your life like starting a new job, improving skills, or personal growth, short-term goals serve as stepping stones to greater success. Below, we’ve outlined short-term goals examples for both professional and personal contexts to inspire your own journey.

10 short-term professional goals examples:

• Manage the next quarterly project from start to finish in Q3.

• Get certified in a project management tool by EOY.

• Increase the net promoter score by five points this quarter.

• Build social reach with five LinkedIn posts a day for the next 30 days.

• Schedule three networking lunches this month.

• Call 50 new prospects this quarter.

• Log off at 6:00 PM every day this week.

• Reduce creative requests backlog by 10% in Q1.

• Publish six new blog posts in the next 60 days.

• Update the portfolio with new designs by the end of next month.

10 personal short-term goals examples:

• Put 5% of your monthly income into a savings account starting next month.

• Explore a new hobby like painting or gardening for 20 minutes every evening for the next 30 days.

• Read two books this month, including one focused on improving your well-being.

• Reduce screen time daily average by 15 minutes this week to improve mental clarity and well-being.

• Track spending for 30 days to identify areas for financial improvement and stress reduction.

• Call a friend every Saturday morning this month to strengthen personal connections and improve emotional well-being.

• Walk for 15 minutes every day starting next week as part of your physical and mental well-being routine.

• Dedicate 15 minutes daily to learning a new language using an app or online platform for the next 60 days.

• Journal for 20 minutes every Sunday starting next month, reflecting on your well-being and personal growth.

• Play with your kids for 30 minutes every night starting today, focusing on creativity and building meaningful relationships.

10 short-term goals examples that will help you at work:

• Organize your email inbox and set up filters to prioritize important messages by the end of this week.

• Attend one in-person or virtual workshop on project management within the next month.

• Create a template for weekly status updates to improve team communication by next Monday.

• Automate three recurring tasks using new project management tools this quarter.

• Check in with your team and deliver a five-minute presentation on progress during the next staff meeting.

• Shadow a colleague in a different department for one day this month to learn about their workflows.

• Provide feedback on three team members' deliverables by the end of this week.

• Write down and share three specific goals for your career growth with your manager before your next 1:1.

• Research and enroll in an online course to learn new skills relevant to your role within the next 14 days.

• Reduce your participation in nonessential meetings by 25% this month to focus on critical tasks.

Notice that ‌these types of goals all have a specific time frame assigned to them. This makes your goal more actionable by connecting those actions to a specific amount of time.

Strategies for setting short-term goals

Being strategic about how you set your goals can help focus them—which will ultimately make it more likely that your goals pay off. Try these strategies to get more specific, actionable short-term goals:

SMART Goals

SMART goals are a common goal-setting technique. SMART is an acronym that stands for:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Achievable

• Realistic

• Time-bound

Ensuring that your goals contain every facet of a SMART goal can help you get clear on what you want to accomplish, how you’re going to do it, and when it needs to be done.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

When setting short-term goals, it's important to connect specific actions to your goals. By creating actionable stepping stones, you can set up a strong roadmap towards achieving your goals—both short-term and long-term ones.

You can see this approach in action with OKRs, or objectives and key results. The objective is the goal you want to achieve. The key results are the metrics by which you'll measure progress towards those goals.

Goals can be used in conjunction with OKRs to help you make progress on key results. Think about what actions you need to take to achieve the desired key results and use those to set your goals.

How to set short-term goals

Achieving short-term goals starts with a structured process. Follow these three steps to set goals that are clear, actionable, and effective. We’ll use a digital marketing example to guide you through the short-term goal-setting process.

Step 1: Define your goal

The first step is to be specific about what you want to achieve. Vague goals lead to vague results, so clearly articulate your objective. For example, instead of saying, “I want more traffic,” set a clear and measurable goal like, “Increase website traffic by 20% in the next 30 days.”

When your goal is specific and attainable, it’s easier to stay focused and motivated. Think about how this goal fits into the broader areas of your life, such as career growth or team performance.

Step 2: Break your goal into steps

Big goals can feel overwhelming, so break them into smaller, manageable actions. For the digital marketing goal of increasing traffic, your steps might look like this:

• Research and publish two blog posts each week targeting trending topics.

• Plan and execute a social media campaign with daily posts that drive users to the website.

• Launch a Google Ads campaign, testing at least two new audience segments.

Each step serves as a stepping stone toward the larger objective, making the process feel achievable while giving you a roadmap to follow.

Step 3: Set a timeline

Without deadlines, even the best goals can stall. Assign a clear timeline to each step to stay on track. For the example:

• Draft and publish the first blog post by Thursday.

• Launch the ad campaign by the start of next week.

• Schedule social media posts for the entire month by Friday.

Breaking tasks into specific time frames ensures consistent progress and avoids procrastination. Use tools like goal tracking templates or project management software to monitor your progress.

By following these steps, you’ll transform your goals into actionable steps that are easy to manage and measure. With this approach, success becomes a matter of commitment and follow-through.

Example of how to set short-term goals

Let’s say your social media team's OKR is to increase your social media following by 400% this fiscal year. 

There's no clear plan for how to get to that 400%, so the team gets together to brainstorm actionable steps they can take to increase their social media following. One team member suggests hosting giveaways twice a quarter to increase follower counts. Another team member suggests using paid ads to increase awareness. Another suggests working with different influencers every week to promote their brand. 

All three of these ideas are good options, and all of them can be set as short-term goals to achieve the main OKR. Here's what those three goals would look like written out:

1. Host a giveaway two times a quarter.

2. Gain 250 followers through paid advertisements every quarter.

3. Promote each account through an influencer channel once a week.

Each of these shorter goals focuses specifically on a task that contributes to a longer-term company goal. Aligning tasks with smaller team goals and bigger company objectives is a central aspect of building a pyramid of clarity. With the pyramid of clarity, you can connect your day-to-day work to your short-term goals. That way, your entire team is working towards the same objective, bringing your organization closer to achieving it.

Tracking goal progress

Whether it’s a long-term career goal or a short-term personal one, goal tracking is essential to ensure that you’re making progress. 

According to a recent survey by Asana, only 26% of knowledge workers have a very clear understanding of how their work contributes to company goals. If your team members don’t know what goals they're contributing to, they might not be producing work that impacts those big-picture company goals.

Goal tracking helps you see if the work your team is doing contributes towards a bigger goal. But how do you ensure that your team is regularly working towards those goals? Here are a few strategies:

• Communicate progress clearly: When everybody sees how work is progressing, there's no confusion as to whether or not the work is contributing to the goal. 

• Create (and celebrate!) project milestones: As your team progresses, it's important to celebrate incremental progress so they don't get discouraged halfway through or lose focus.

• Manage goals with software: Connect your team's work with your company's goals all in one place. By using work management software like Asana, your team will have one source of truth for all work. 

One of the major benefits of goal tracking is that it gives you visibility into whether your strategies are working. If you're actively monitoring your key results and not seeing the desired outcomes, you can dig further to discover what’s missing. Does one of your team members have too much on their plate? Is one of your strategies not as effective as you thought it would be?

When things don't go as planned, monitoring your goals gives you the chance to adjust your strategy. 

Using short-term goals for professional development

You might not be able to control everything about your professional life, but setting goals helps you take advantage of those you can control. Whether it's preparing for a review six months away, enrolling in an online course, or pursuing a complete career change, these short-term goals will guide you towards making significant progress in your professional life.

Managing team goals to become an effective manager

As a manager, it could be challenging to create your own personal goals without first looking at your team’s individual goals. Great managers help unblock contributors so that goal-achieving tasks can get done. 

Before setting personal goals as a manager, look at your team’s goals. Base your goals on the work your team is contributing to so that everyone is aligned and making progress. 

Monitoring personal professional development with short-term goals

In addition to using short-term career goals to monitor your team’s or company's progress, you can monitor short-term goals to track your own—or a team member’s—personal development. If you’re developing new skills or taking on new responsibilities, track how those skills are helping you achieve your goals. 

Let’s look at an example.

Taylor is a sales development representative at a SaaS company. They don’t particularly enjoy spending time on sales calls, but they’ve found several tools to help them create an automated email flow to reach out to their prospects. 

Taylor’s manager notices that they are not making the recommended number of sales calls, but they’re still hitting their sales goals because of how well their prospect emails convert.

Taylor’s manager sees this as an opportunity for growth and asks Taylor if they would like to transition to a role that allows them to further create email marketing opportunities for other SDRs on the team. By monitoring how Taylor was progressing towards their goals, Taylor’s manager was able to create an opportunity for them to grow into a position that was a strong fit for their skillset. 

Setting goals for your own personal development

Goals can be used to help your personal development as well. If you have long-term life goals, you can set up short-term personal goals as you would professional ones. Set measurable goals to serve as small stepping stones for your progress. 

You can use short-term personal goals for a variety of different aspirations. For example, you can set up short-term financial goals to hit a bigger goal of reducing credit card debt. Or, maybe you use weekly goals to develop a fitness or morning routine. These shorter, targeted goals can have a big impact on your daily life.

Here’s an example of how you can break down a personal goal:

Long-term personal goal: Run a half marathon within 6 months 

Short-term goals:

• Be able to run a mile without stopping by the end of week 2

• Run a 5K by the end of month 1 in under 35 minutes

• Run a 10K by the end of month 2 in under an hour

As you can see, the short-term goals are incremental, yet they all contribute to the ultimate goal—running a marathon.

Track short-term goals more effectively

Looking for a way to effectively track your goals, both short-term and long-term? Tracking your goals using work management software like Asana can help you break your goals into actionable tasks.

Short and sweet: Your short-term goals FAQ

Whether you’re after the short-term goal definition or just need some quick tips, we’ve got your questions covered.