How Can Short Term Goals Best Lead Towards Accomplishing Long Term Career Goals: A Parent’s Guide
As a parent, getting time to yourself is a delicacy.
On the rare occasion I get some time to myself to relax, it lasts about five minutes before I’m asleep on the couch.
The idea of taking time to set goals may sound impossible, but if you want to have success both as a parent and in your career, setting goals can be the best way to set yourself up for success.
You might be wondering, how can Short Term goals best lead towards accomplishing long term career goals?
In this article, I plan to answer that question and give you all of the resources you need so you can set goals and crush them, so you win as a parent and as a professional.
What You’ll Learn from This Article:
· Why setting goals as a parent is important
· Strategies for Developing Short Term Goals
· How Short Term goals can lead towards accomplishing Long Term career goals
Before we get into strategies for developing goals, check out this article on the relationship between Short Term and Long Term goas so you can get a crash course on the benefits of goals and the importance of each type.
Now, let’s move on to some quick strategies for setting goals.
Strategies for Developing Short Term Goals
1. Be Specific: Clearly define what you want to achieve, avoiding vague terms. This makes it easier to track progress.
2. Set Realistic Timeframes: Choose deadlines that are achievable within a few weeks or months to maintain focus and momentum.
3. Break Down Larger Goals: Divide bigger objectives into smaller, manageable tasks to make the goal less overwhelming.
4. Prioritize: Focus on goals that are most relevant to your immediate needs, ensuring you’re making progress in important areas.
5. Track Progress: Regularly check your progress and make adjustments as needed to stay on course.
As a busy parent, you might be having a difficult time setting aside a few minutes to actually think about your goals. So when can you do it? Here are a few tips on how you can find some time.
1. Your commute to work or when you’re in the car alone: This is a great time to spend a few minutes in your head (while paying attention to the road). If you need to take notes, dictate to your phone or your watch.
2. During exercise time: If you have the chance to get a workout during the week, you can exercise your brain at the same time and think about goals.
3. While your kids are asleep: If you’re a night owl, spend a few minutes at night or if you’re an early bird, get some morning sunlight and think about goals.
Now that we know how to set goals, and sometimes during the day when we can try and focus on coming up with goals, lets dive into learning how Short Term goals can lead towards accomplishing Long Term career goals.
How Short Term Goals Can Lead Towards Accomplishing Long Term Career Goals:
In the life of a parent, you’re constantly trying just make it through one day at a time. This is the opposite of what you should be doing when setting goals. Ideally, you should be trying to set a few short term goals that will be attainable and ultimately lead you to your long term goals.
Let me give you an example.
When my wife was pregnant with my first son, I decided I really wanted to leave my current job to get something more flexible and more meaningful. I knew I couldn’t just walk in and quit my job with a baby on the way, so I had to set some short term goals to try and hit until I was able to reach the ultimate goal of a new job.
Here’s what I did:
1. I came up with the career path I wanted to transition to within 5 years (before my son started Kindergarten). This was my Long Term goal.
2. Next, I figured out the skills I needed and how long I wanted to take to acquire those skills. This was my first Short Term goal.
3. Once I acquired these skills, I set out to find side hustles I could do while I was working and set a length of time, I wanted to be working side hustles for. This was another Short Term goal.
4. Once I felt ready, I started applying for full-time jobs in the career I wanted to transition to. This was the last step to achieving my Long Term goal which also was a Short Term goal since it was the last step.
Setting these Short Term goals gave me something to reach for and hold myself accountable for. It also kept me on track while my head was in other places with a young child.
#2: They Help You Develop Key Competencies Gradually
I have some news for you. You’re not going to go from Medical Sales to being a Pilot for United Airlines overnight. Sometimes as parents, we want to get out of the situation we’re in so desperately that we don’t think about the steps in between because our head is filled with a million other things.
Having Short Term goals to lead you to your Long Term goals force you to slow yourself down and be intentional about what you’re doing.
My wife can attest to this and I’m not afraid to admit it, but there are times when my head goes 100 miles an hour and I wind up doing things halfway. Like trying to clean up my son while being on the phone with the cable company. It usually results in food staining my son’s shirt…. oops.
It’s a long way of saying that by having Short Term goals, it allows you to gradually build to where you want to be in five or 10 or more years and you know you won’t need to rush because you’ve come up with a timeline that’s right for you.
#3: They Help You Maintain Flexibility While Staying on Course
If you’re the parent of a young child especially, you know that things don’t stay the same for long. Just when you think you’re getting in the grove, something changes, and you feel like you’re back to being clueless.
This is the same for career goals.
Maybe you have a dream of becoming a doctor, but your path takes a few unexpected turns, this is where having flexible Short Term goals can be essential to your career.
Let’s use the example of wanting to become a doctor.
Things are going great, you’re in medical school and you can see the finish line. Then you get some unexpected news that you’re going to had a child. Now what? Do you scrap your dreams of becoming a doctor just because you’re having a child? I hope not.
Changing your Short Term goals to adapt to your life will keep you on track so that at some point in life, you become that doctor you’ve always wanted to be.
Maybe it means you pause medical school and find a job in the healthcare industry while you raise your child for a few years. Or, maybe you and your partner decide you’re going to finish and become a doctor while your partner takes the brunt of the parenting work for the first few years.
Whatever you decide, you know that your Short Term Goals can be crafted to fit your lifestyle.
#4: They Boost Motivation and Confidence with Tangible Progress
As a busy working parent, your days may sometimes feel monotonous. Wake up, take care of kids, go to work, come home from work, take care of kids, sleep, rinse and repeat.
Having Short Term goals to aim for each day can not only be motivating, but it can also increase your confidence when you hit these goals.
Let’s go back to the doctor for example.
Let’s say you decided to push through medical school and become a doctor. You’ll have countless exams you’ll need to study for, and knowing you have to hit your Short Term goals of passing these exams should give you the motivation you need when things get tough.
You’ll have a clear timeline and schedule of when you can put more into your parenting and when you should be putting more into your studies.
What You Should Do Next
To be a great parent means you’ll need balance, and that’s what setting goals does for you. My son has been into Mario lately, so I’ll make a Mario reference here that I think works. If you imagine your short term goals as the checkpoints in Mario Kart, they are something to aim for as you make your way through your career journey.
If you need more resources when it comes to setting goals, you can check out this article on goals as well.
If you want to speak with one of our talented Career Strategists and Coaches, click on this link and you can book an absolutely FREE discovery call.
Now get out there and make your goals count, for not only your sake, but your family too.