How long will it take you to reach your goal?

Goals come in different timeframes. You can accomplish many goals tomorrow, and others may take twenty years to complete. Consider the following when categorizing goals:

–       Short-term: 1 year or less

–       Intermediate: 1-5 years

–       Long-term: 5+ years.

Most people have long-term goals for their life. Careers, families, wealth, and health usually fall in the long-term range. The biggest struggle with long-term goals is they seem like dreams, almost too far away to be actionable. It is hard to see how we get from today to where we want to be in 10 or 20 years. A lot of people have long-term goals but many don’t have a specific plan to reach them.

Short-term goals run all over the place and are the fun, action-oriented events most people talk about. These often include losing 10 pounds, running a marathon, finding a new job or a promotion, buying a new car, and many more. Generally, this is what I hear when I ask people, “What goals do you have?”

I’ve found that intermediate goals are the least common upon people I talk to. These goals often get lost in the haze between short-term and long-term.  They aren’t big enough to be long-term dreams and not quickly accomplished like short-term goals.  Three to five years is my personal favorite because you can change and do about anything you want but it’s not so far away that you can’t grasp it.

Over the next few posts, I’ll discuss these 3 goal timeframes in more detail. You have to consider all three to be successful and fulfilled with your goals, business and life!  Do you have specific questions about short, intermediate, or long-term goals? Reach out via a comment here or my email (phil@philklutts.com) and I will answer it in person or in my next blog.

One more thing, check out the current short-term project/goal that my family is undertaking at thisisthehome.blogspot.com. We’ve reopened the blog we used when building our home to share our new project. Enjoy!