An Ultimate Guide to Short Term Goals You Can Actually Achieve

Creating, tracking, and achieving short term goals is at the heart of living your best life.

Short term goals create a roadmap to your dreams, giving you ways to track progress, form healthy habits, seek out opportunity, and so much more.

Personally, I have found great success using short term goal setting and achieving and I am positive you will be able to use short term goals as a stepping stone into your dream life.

Ready to learn more and begin changing your life today? Let’s get started!

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What are Short-Term Goals?

Before we dive in, I want to be incredibly clear on what I mean when I say “short term goals.” Short term goals are small, bite-sized milestones or accomplishments you set for yourself with deadlines that are (usually) one year or less. Anything beyond one year? I would consider that a long-term goal. To make things simple, I consider short term goals small tasks that can easily be tracked, and are often your long-term goals broken up. Your long-term goals, on the other hand, are large, big-picture goals that usually need a lot of work to achieve. An example of a long-term goal might be to graduate college, whereas a short term goal would be to pass all of your classes this coming semester with A’s.

Related: Achieve Your Long-Term Goals in 8 Simple Steps

Why are Short-Term Goals so Important?

Next, let’s quickly discuss why short term goals are so important and all the amazing benefits associated with them. Out of all the different types of goals you can set for yourself (bucket list items, long term goals, short term goals, etc.), I personally find that short term goals are the most important! Why? You might be thinking. Well, the main reason is because they create a roadmap with bite-sized, actionable tasks and habits you can work on each day and week that will allow you to reach your large, long-term goals. This is crucial to living out your best life! Short term goals also have countless benefits.

Some of my favorite benefits include the fact that short term goals:

• Push you outside your comfort zone and help you seek out opportunity
• Create a roadmap to allow you to reach your most lofty goals
• Help you form healthy and meaningful habits that work towards a larger goal
• Give you an easy way to track your progress on large projects and goals
• Motivate you to reach your highest potential
• Assist you in living your best life
• Force you to re-evaluate your values and priorities in life

Supplies for Creating Short-Term Goals

One last thing before we really dive into the steps of short term goal setting: supplies! It is true, goal setting can easily be done digitally. But a much more fun and perhaps more fulfilling way is to write them all down by hand. Many people choose to create short term goals and include them inside their planner or journal. Others create a visual goal list with pictures for each one. Whichever way you choose, here are some great supplies to help you along the way:

• The Olden Chapters Goal Printable Planner: This is the ultimate goal printable planner! With over 25 different workbooks, calendars, trackers, goal worksheets, and more, this planner includes everything you might need to reach each and every goal this year.
• Bullet Journal: Many people use a bullet journal as a planner, list holder, or personal journal. I personally use it as the latter two paired with my printable planner. Bullet journals make amazing notebooks because they have dot-grid pages and a specific index area. If you want to learn more about how to use a bullet journal efficiently, check out Rider Carol’s fabulous book The Bullet Journal Method.
• Project Planning Free Printable: This is my free project planning printable that is perfect for starting your goals of on the right foot! It helps you create an attack plan for any large goal, with space for notes, a task list, reward, and more!

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Project Planning (10 Easy Steps!)

• Coletto Pen and Refill: These pens are absolutely my favorite to use when color coding tasks and notes. They are fantastic multi-pens that don’t feel too bulky and have amazing ink quality! Be warned, the pen itself doesn’t come with ink (because they are so customizable) so you have to purchase them separately.
• Tombow Duel Brush Pens: These fantastic brush pens are great for goal setting, journaling, and project planning. The lighter colors are great to use as highlighters and the darker colors are perfect for sketching out ideas. They are super popular to use with the bullet journal!
• Poster Board: When you’re working on your goals, it is important to print them out and post them somewhere (even better to create a vision board!). Poster board is one of the cheap essentials needed in this process!

Related: Create Your Dream Vision Board Today!

• Glitter Glue: Another great craft supply to always have on hand is glitter glue. It just adds that extra bit of flare to any project, don’t you think?
• Command Strips: Command strips are perfect for hanging up your goals and poster board onto your wall. I use these ALL THE TIME to hang up my vision board and goals (which I keep in a picture frame on the wall near my desk). Command strips make it so easy to hang anything you need and ensure you don’t damage you walls!
• Mod-Podge: Finally, mod-podge is great when creating your goals, especially if you are going to hang up a list of your goals or create a vision board on your wall. Just add a layer of mod-podge and it will last forever!

Check out my Ultimate Goal Printable Planner today! It will help ensure you reach every goal this year!

Project Planner Free Printable

This freebie is perfect to kickstart your goals on the right track! It helps you turn your goals into actionable steps, with space to add a task list, notes, ideas, rewards, and so much more! Download it today to get started!

12 Simple Steps to Creating Short-Term Goals

Now that you have all the information at your fingertips you might need in order to really understand and succeed in short-term goal setting, let’s dive into the essential steps! Below, I have listed each crucial step to creating successful and achievable short-term goals. Each one is very important, so be sure to not skip any step. Ready? Let’s go!

1. Create a Personal Mission Statement

First, creating a meaningful and well-thought-out personal mission statement is vital before staring any goal-setting process. This is a one-to-two sentence statement that embodies your personal values, priorities, and overall purpose in life. It doesn’t take too long to create and is such a useful tool to use throughout your entire life. It will help you maintain focus throughout your goal-setting process and ensure you stay true to yourself. Check out how to create your own in my step-by-step guide HERE.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Creating the Perfect Personal Mission Statement

2. Create Long-Term Goals and a Bucket List

Next, I highly recommend you complete the full goal-setting process to create your long-term goals and bucket list. Once completed, these lists will drastically help you create your short term goals. How? They give you complete guidance and ensure you are working towards something larger and more important in your life. HERE is my guide to creating a meaningful bucket list and HERE is my ultimate guide to create long-term goals.

Related: How to Create a Meaningful Bucket List (+50 Ideas to Get You Started!)

3. Decide on Your Categories

Step three is to create your short-term goal categories. This is a list of categories in your life (such as health, career, travel, etc) that encompass each area in your life you wish to work on. These categories will make it much easier to organize your thoughts and ideas later on. If you have already created your long-term goals, you should have a category list already started. However, be sure to add any additional categories you might want to focus on for your shorter goals as well. For example, I currently don’t have “health” as a long-term goal category, but I do use that category for my short term goals (this helps me track my water intake, hours slept, workouts, etc. that don’t necessarily need to be tracked in the long run).

Goal Category Ideas:

• Career
• Business
• Family
• Health
• Personal
• Financial
• Education
• Travel
• Experience

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4. Brainstorm Your Short-Term Goals

Next, it is time to begin to brainstorm! For each category, begin jotting down any ideas for short term goals that come to mind. To trigger some ideas, you can begin by answering the following questions:

• What do I want my life to look like one year from now? What goals can I create to make this happen?
• Are there any tasks or habits I need to do in order to reach each my long-term goals?
• What daily and/or weekly habits do I need begin working on or continue to maintain progress?
• What are my top priorities in my life right now? How can I work on these each day? Reference your personal mission statement!
• Are there any major events that are occurring this or next year that I need to prepare for? How can I do that and turn it into a goal?
• Are there any great bucket list items I want to complete this year? How can I do this?

Tip: How to Turn Long-Term Goals into Short-Term Steps

Let’s go over a quick example of short-term goals created from your long-term goals. In the long-term goals post, I talked about an example of saving for a down payment on a home, let’s re-visit that example here:

Long-Term Goal: Save $20,000 for a down payment on a house in three years.

Short-Term Goal: Save $6,667 for a down payment on a house this year, for a house you will purchase in three years.

Then, you could turn this short-term goal for the year into monthly goals of saving $556 each month! Pretty straight forward, right? This can easily be done with each of your goals.

Here are some tips to turn your long-term goals into short-term yearly goals:  

• Divide your long-term goals by the amount of years you have to achieve it. Above is a great example of this.
• Create a task list for each long-term goal and divide the tasks by the number of years you have to achieve it. For example:
  • Long-Term Goal: Get hired at XYZ Company.
  • Tasks to turn into short term goals: Update resume, apply to 5 internships, land an internship, attend 5 networking events with XYZ Company, apply to XYZ Company internship, apply to XYZ Company job
• Don’t be afraid, hesitant, or discouraged to repeat the same short-term goal each year, even if you haven’t achieved it.

5. Get Inspired!

Next, turn to the internet, podcasts, and books for some other great ideas! This is the perfect way to keep your goal ideas flowing and could trigger some fantastic ideas! Keep writing down those ideas until you can’t think of anything else to add. Here is a list of short-term goal ideas to get you started:

Career

• Update resume 3 times this year
• Apply to 10 different internships
• Attend 4 different networking events
• Apply for a promotion before the end of the year
• Research job opportunities and continuing education events for 10 hours this year
• Read 3 different books related to my career

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Dream Career (10 Easy Steps!)

Business

• Start a money-making blog this year and launch the website before December 31^st
• Open my own online store this year and make my first sale
• Create a full plan to turn my side-hustle into a full time job

Related: Free 5-Day Start a Money-Making Blog Course that will Skyrocket your Side-Hustle Earnings

Family

• Go on 12 different date night adventures this year
• Host 6 different family dinners
• Plan a surprise party for a family member
• Attend 8 family events this year (birthdays, anniversary parties, holidays, school events, etc.)

Related: 34 Surprisingly Cheap Date Night Ideas to Try This Year

Health

• Sleep 8 hours a night for four nights a week all year
• Workout 3 times each week for the entire year (or 156 workouts total)
• Drink 8 glasses of water every-day for the entire year
• Attend 10 different fitness/yoga/etc. classes this year
• Join a new gym and actually go at least 35 times this year
• Try out 20 new healthy recipes this year

Related: The Secret to Eating Healthy on a Budget

Personal

• Revamp my planning system this year to skyrocket my productivity (check out my favorite planner HERE)
• Read 52 books this year (or 1 per week): A great way to do this is with Audible while commuting, cleaning, and working out… I swear by it!
• Start a journal (this is my favorite one!) and write in it at least 50 times this year

Related: 21 Must-Read Books for 20-Somethings

Financial

• Pay off $10,000 of debt this year
• Fill out 100 different scholarship applications
• Save $6,000 for a down payment on a house
• Revisit and update my budget 12 times this year
• Learn and try out 10 new tips to save money this year

Related: 62 Genius Ways to Save a TON of Money This Year

Education

• Pass each class with an A this year
• Download and use Duolingo 100 times this year to learn a new language for free
• Apply to college or graduate school

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Studying for an Exam

Travel/Experience

• Hike on 10 different trails
• Check of 2 new Bucket List items this year
• Visit a different country this year

Related: Easily Create your very own Inspiring Bucket List Right Now!

6. Narrow Down Your Ideas

At this point, you probably have a giant list of goals for the year. Now is the time to start narrowing them down until you only have a handful for each category. Remember to keep everything organized in one place (like a planner). Keep narrowing them down until you are satisfied with your list. Things to keep in mind:

• Is this a priority this year?
• Is this goal realistic or am I setting myself up for failure?
• Does this align with my personal mission statement?  

Related: The ONLY Student Planner You’ll Ever Need to Smash your Goals

7. Finalize Your Goals and Make them SMART

Next, it is time to finalize each of your individual short-term goals and ensure they are all SMART. What is a SMART goal, you might ask? These are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. I did a detailed example in my long-term goals post but let’s do a quick example here as well:

Brainstormed goal: Drink more water

SMART Short-Term Goal: Drink 8 glasses of water a day for 300 days this year.

This goal is specific (drink 8 glasses of water), measurable (you can measure both how many glasses of water you drink and how many days you do this), attainable (300 days is a physical number you CAN reach), realistic (notice I didn’t put 365 days, which gives room for flexibility), and time bound (must do this by the end of the year).

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8. Create a Plan to Achieve each Short-Term Goal

After you have finalized each goal, create an individual plan for each one. I have found one of the best ways to achieve your short-term yearly goals is to first, turn them into monthly goals then turn whichever tasks you need to into weekly and daily goals and habits. For example, your daily habit list (which could be tracked using a monthly habit tracker) could include: drink 8 glasses of water, journal before bedtime, read 2 chapters in a book. While your weekly habits or goals could include: workout 3 times and work 4 hours on a side hustle, and perhaps your weekly goals could be to: go on a date night, set aside $500 for savings, and go on a hike. I have some great worksheets and habit trackers that can help you with this process in my Goal Printable Planner.

Top tools to use to reach your goals might include:

• Habit trackers
• Daily, weekly, and monthly goal task lists
• Time management or time tracking apps
• Personal planner
• Personal journal
• Goal binder
• Spreadsheets

Related: Check out this amazing Student Printable Planner today to help track your Goal Progress!

9. Post Your Goals Somewhere You Can See Them

After you’ve finalized your goal list and created your attack plan, write down a final copy and/or print it out and place it somewhere you can reference easily. Multiple places is ideal! You could place a copy near your desk, in your planner, in your journal, on your computer, and on your phone too!

10. Schedule Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Goal Reviews

Next, it is vital that you schedule time to review your goals, check in with your progress, reward good behavior, and modify your goal plan as the year progresses. A great way to do that is to physically schedule a time each month, quarter, and year to review your goals. I mean it! Right now, I want you to pull out your calendar and add a task to the following days to complete a goal review:

• January 1: Yearly, Quarterly and Monthly Review (of previous year, quarter, and month)
• February 1: Monthly Review
• March 1: Monthly Review
• April 1: Quarterly and Monthly Review
• May 1: Monthly Review
• June 1: Monthly Review
• July 1: Quarterly and Monthly Review
• August 1: Monthly Review
• September 1: Monthly Review
• October 1: Quarterly and Monthly Review
• November 1: Monthly Review
• December 1: Monthly Review

Related: How to Plan an Entire Year in Advance – A Complete Guide to Yearly Planning

11. Create a Vision Board

Next, vision boards are the perfect way to maintain motivation throughout the year. They are incredibly useful tools that you can turn to when you forget why you started or perhaps just need a little boost of inspiration throughout your day. Check out THIS post to learn how to create the most effective vision board today!

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Creating an Inspirational Vision Board to Ensure You Reach Your Goals this Year!

12. Take Action: Go and Achieve Your Goals!

Finally, you are now officially ready to start living your dream life and smash your goals! No better time to start than now, so start taking action today! Don’t forget to track your progress with habit trackers and check in with your goal progress when possible. Get after it!

Bonus: Top Tips to Ensure You Reach Your Short-Term Goals This Year

Starting a goal plan is over half of the battle. So, after reading this post, you are already well on your way to success… well done you! In order to keep up this momentum and ensure you smash those killer goals you’ve just created, here are my top tips for success:

• Use an effective planner to track your goals and progress, as well as schedule goal check-ins
• Utilize habit trackers each day to ensure your checking in with your goals on a daily basis
• Use project planning (freebie at the top of this post!) to map out each goal
• Look at your goals EVERYDAY by using a vision board
• Break each yearly goal into bite-sized pieces using weekly and monthly goals (and incorporate goal-planning into your weekly planning routine!)
• Reward yourself each week or month for reaching your smaller goals
• Create a HUGE reward for the end of the year of you meet at least 80% of your yearly goals (such as a holiday trip, big purchase, etc.)

Top Books on Goal Setting

The entire goal setting and achieving process can be overwhelming and difficult. There are absolutely right and wrong ways of going about it and these books have helped me achieve my biggest dreams (and continue to lead me in the right direction today!). I am sure they will lead you on the path to achieving your largest goals in life.

The Compound Effect: Jumpstart your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy

If you haven’t read this book you are seriously missing out. It is a complete game changer and should be sitting on everyone’s shelf. This Wall Street Journal and New York Times Bestseller covers the powerful yet surprisingly simple principle that little everyday decisions will either help you achieve greatness or end up in disaster naturally, and how to steer them in the right direction. It covers how to win at everything, abolish bad habits, maintain motivation and more. It is an absolute must read!

Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals by Michael Hyatt

As the title suggests, this is book covers a phenomenal 5-step plan that guarantees you set and reach the most important goals in your life. It covers tips that help you when you get stuck, how to quit-proof your goals, and so much more. As an added bonus, it is a quick and easy read!

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr

This New York Times Bestseller explores the secrets of the famous and wildly successful goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that has been proven time and time again to be effective. This system ensures you maintain focus and stay on track until your goals are being met!

Goals! How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Thought Possible by Brian Tracy

This is a fantastic book that helps distinguish the people who reach their goals from those that just dream of having a better life. It then dives into a simple yet powerful goal setting method that is incredibly effective. Tracy also focuses on specific goals in different areas in life, such as finances, health, and family. A fantastic read!

Related: 21 Life-Changing Books You Must Read in Your 20’s!

Goal-Setting Series

This post is part of my goal-setting series. Here are the rest of the great posts included in this blog series (and what order I recommend reading them in):

1. How to Create a Personal Mission Statement and Why It’s So Important
2. Discover How to Create a Motivational Bucket List (+50 Ideas to Get You Started)
3. The Ultimate Guide to Long-Term Goal Planning
4. How to Create Short Term Goals in 12 Easy Steps: An Ultimate Guide
5. Create the Perfect Vision Board in These Simple Steps
6. How to Complete a Monthly Goal Review
7. An Ultimate Guide to Completing a Personal Mid-Year Review
8. Steps for a Successful Quarterly and Yearly Goal Review
9. 12 Secretes to Ensure You Reach Your Goals This Year
10. The Ultimate Guide to Goal Setting and Achieving

That’s a wrap! You did it, you finally made it to the end! I know, I threw a TON of information at you but I really wanted you to be completely prepared and successful when you begin to create your goals! I hope you found this post useful and I am so excited for you to begin to make some amazing goals and start living a life you truly enjoy! Happy goal setting and have fun!

Ready to take your goals to the next level? Check out my ultimate goal printable planner to help you on your journey today!