How to balance short-term and long-term goals
Raise your hand if you set goals at the start of the year. ✋
Raise your hand if you have forgotten about some of those goals by now. ✋
Yup, that’s normal and I invite you to join me in making sure you tackle your goals consistently over the coming months.
The Challenge
At the start of the year you set ambitious goals for yourself.
You were fired up during January, started slipping in February and now you’ve forgotten about some of the goals altogether. Not all of them excite you anymore and some feel like a burden.
They are important to you and you want to work towards them, but have lost your mojo.
The Solution
When you set a long-term goal, it’s easy to not take any action today or tomorrow because you still have so much time.
It’s important to have goals that guide you, and you have to make them more tangible, so you can take specific action that makes a difference.
For example, you want to get a promotion from Data Scientist to Senior Data Scientist in two years and then progress to manager in five years. While they seem concrete, they are too broad for any specific action you can take right now. So how do you make the next two to five years count?
You work backwards.
What do you need to do to get the promotion to Senior Data Scientist?
What skills do you need to demonstrate?
What technical skills do you need to develop?
What internal and external relationships do you need to build?
How can you create the opportunities to demonstrate your capabilities?
What’s the process in your company to get promoted?
Is there a formalised career ladder you can use for guidance?
How does management decide who gets promoted?
What are the timelines?
These questions (and others you can think of) help you come up with a more concrete plan.
For example, if part of you building your skills requires formal training, conference attendance, etc., when can you complete these and how do you get the relevant approvals?
Get more and more specific as you refine your plan. The more specific you get, the more achievable your big goals become.
The Next Step
I’m refreshing how I’m tackling my own goals and here is my approach:
Spell out your goals and categorise them into:
short-term (next 3 months),
medium-term (this year), and
long-term goals (beyond this year)
For each goal define clearly what it is and why you want to achieve it.
Example: In two years I want to be promoted to Senior Data Scientist in my current company and team. This will reflect my contributions and ongoing learning & development.
This promotion shows internally that I am taking more responsibility for our model development. Externally, the title will carry more weight in the community and I want to use this as a way to gain more speaking opportunities.
For short-term goals, define three weekly actions that contribute to achieving a goal.
Example: I am taking the lead in organising the upcoming user group next month.
This week I need to:
Send invites to the mailing list
Create social media posts with event details
Confirm speakers and get their details, bio, photo, and title of their talk
For medium-term goals, create a list of sub goals, working backwards from the actual goal itself.
Example: By the end of 2024 I have finished the draft of my first book. To achieve this, I need to:
Decide on the final topic
Define the intended audience
Create a complete outline of all chapters
Create a writing routine that fits my existing schedule
Write one chapter a week between June and December
For long-term goals, use the above approach and include dependencies.
Example: In three years I want to move from a traditional 9-5 schedule to four days a week while remaining in a senior technical role. To do this I need to:
Prove myself as an excellent technical expert
Build trust with leaders to gain their approval for my request
Further build my leadership skills so I can effectively empower others
Enable others with the right skills and knowledge to take on some of the work I currently do
These examples will hopefully serve as a useful starting point for you.
Once you have gone through a detailed goal-setting exercise, keep them front of mind. Whatever approach you choose needs to work for YOU. You could write them onto the digital wallpaper of your laptop screen, frame them and hang them above your desk, send yourself reminders and so on.
Keep those goals visible, make the steps as concrete as possible and create a plan that lets you achieve them.
Have a great week!
Eva
P.S. If you’d like my help with tackling your professional goals, let me know by filling out this form and we’ll jump on a call to discuss further.
