Short-Term Versus Long-Term Goals

There are two main types of goals that you can strive to achieve- short-term goals and long-term goals.  Short-term goals are those goals that usually involve relatively easy to moderate tasks and that can be completed within a relatively short period of time – usually from within a few minutes to maybe a few weeks at most.  Long-term goals are those goals that usually involve either harder tasks and/or a much higher number of relatively easy to moderate tasks that take longer to complete- usually from one or more weeks to several months or even a year or more.  We will go over more of the differences between short-term and long-term goals below.

Short-term goals are those goals that usually can be accomplished within a few minutes to maybe a few weeks at most.  For instance, if you are a student and have a test at the end of the upcoming week, you will need to review the material and prepare for the test.  Doing well on that test can be considered a short-term goal.  If you are an entrepreneur and plan to promote someone else’s product, creating a few email marketing campaigns and a few social media posts could be considered a short-term goal, since completing such campaigns and posts should only take a few hours at most to complete.

Long-term goals are those goals that usually need a few weeks to even a few years to accomplish.  For instance, if you are a student, doing well on your final exam for a course could be considered a long-term goal, since you have to review all of the course material from the past several weeks in order to do well on that exam.  Graduating from high school or college can also be considered a long-term goal, as it often takes four years (or sometimes more in the case of college) to get your diploma or degree.   If you are an entrepreneur, preparing for your own product launch and recruiting affiliates to promote your launch can be considered a long-term goal, since it will usually take several months to successfully launch a product and benefit from it.  Usually, such a product launch can be vital to your business’ profitability and success, which is another reason why it’s a long-term goal- it’s very important to do it well, which means that much focused effort over a long period of time has to be given to it in order to reach that long-term goal.