Short term goals: definition, SMART tips & 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 target you want to achieve in the near future, typically within a few days to a few months. These goals serve as stepping stones toward larger objectives, helping you take focused action on specific tasks or projects. Because of their limited scope, short-term goals tend to be easier to achieve and provide quick wins that build momentum.

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, the bigger objective you want to achieve. Short-term goals focus on a smaller portion of work in a shorter time frame. Breaking a long-term goal into many short-term goals can help you avoid procrastination and stay focused.

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 aims to close $500,000 in new sales over 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.

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:

• Define your goal: Be specific about what you want to achieve

• Break your goal into steps: Divide big goals into smaller, manageable actions

• Set a timeline: Assign deadlines to each step

Let's use a digital marketing example to guide you through the 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 complete 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 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 such as goal-tracking templates or project management software to monitor your progress.

By following these steps, you'll turn your goals into actionable, easy-to-manage, measurable steps. With this approach, success becomes a matter of commitment and follow-through.

Strategies for setting short-term goals

Being strategic about goal-setting increases the likelihood that your goals pay off. Two proven strategies for creating specific, actionable short-term goals are SMART goals and OKRs (objectives and key results).

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 include all the facets 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 to achieve your goals, both short- and long-term.

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 alongside OKRs to help you make progress on key results. Think about the actions you need to take to achieve the desired key results, and use them to set your goals.

Short-term goals examples

Effective short-term goals are specific, time-bound, measurable, and aligned with your long-term objectives. Whether you're focused on career growth, skill development, or personal well-being, these goals serve as stepping stones to greater success. Below are 30 examples to inspire your own goal-setting.

10 short-term professional goals examples:

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

2. Get certified in a project management tool by EOY.

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

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

5. Schedule three networking lunches this month.

6. Call 50 new prospects this quarter.

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

8. Reduce the creative requests backlog by 10% in Q1.

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

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

10 personal short-term goals examples:

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

2. Explore a new hobby, such as painting or gardening, for 20 minutes every evening for the next 30 days.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. 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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Provide feedback on three team members'work by the end of this week.

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

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

10. 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 time frame.

Putting short-term goals into practice

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 reaching 400%, so the team gets together to brainstorm actionable steps 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.

All three of these ideas are good options, and each can be set as a short-term goal 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 connecting goals to your team's work. When you link your day-to-day work to your short-term goals, your entire team works towards the same objective.

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 affects those big-picture company goals.

Goal tracking helps you see if the work your team is doing contributes to 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 everyone can see how work is progressing, there's no confusion about whether it's 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 the visibility it provides into whether your strategies are working. If you're not seeing the desired outcomes, dig deeper to discover what's missing:

• Does a team member have too much on their plate?

• Is one of your strategies less effective than expected?

• Are resources allocated to the right priorities?

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 in your professional life, but setting goals helps you take advantage of what you can. 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 can be challenging to set your own personal goals without first reviewing 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 who prefers email outreach over sales calls. They built an automated email flow that converts so well, they're hitting sales goals despite making fewer calls than recommended.

Taylor's manager notices this strength and offers them a new role creating email marketing opportunities for other SDRs. By monitoring Taylor's progress toward their goals, the manager identified a growth opportunity that aligned with their skill set.

Setting goals for your own personal development

Goals can help your personal development as well. If you have long-term life goals, you can set short-term personal goals the same way you would for 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 aspirations. These shorter, targeted goals can have a big impact on your daily life:

• Financial goals: Save a set amount each month to reduce credit card debt

• Health goals: Develop a fitness or morning routine with weekly targets

• Learning goals: Complete an online course or read a book each month

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 of running a half-marathon.

Achieve your short-term goals with Asana

Short-term goals are the building blocks of long-term success. By breaking big ambitions into clear, time-bound actions, you give yourself and your team a path to follow and a way to measure progress.

Ready to put your short-term goals into action? Get started with Asana to connect your goals to daily tasks, track progress in real time, and keep your team aligned on what matters most.

Frequently asked questions about short-term goals

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