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How Can Short Term Goals Best Lead Towards Accomplishing Long Term Career Goals?
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How Can Short Term Goals Best Lead Towards Accomplishing Long Term Career Goals?

Find the definitions, examples, and frameworks of short-term and long-term goals and learn how short-term ones help you to strive in a career in the long run.
Short and Long Term Career Goals
Written by
Catherine B.
Published on
Apr 28, 2025
Table of contents
Short-term career goals are usually not goals at all, they are actionable tasks getting you closer to long-term goals.
Short-term tasks are the milestones that build up your feeling of fulfillment in your job, a solid paycheck, and a role that makes you proud of naming it out loud.
However, technology threatens to steal your job, geoeconomics is skyrocketing to some chaotic mess, and our collective financial safety has never been so unsafe.
In these conditions, how can short-term goals best lead towards accomplishing long-term career goals? And how does one set career goals on the brink of global wars and economic collapses?
One does that by wisely aligning short-term and long-term goals and tasks in their careers. In this article, StudyPro will overview the 2025 market requirements and strategic moves to make in your short-term goal setting to stay ahead long-term by 2030.
Short and Long Term Career Goals
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Baby Steps, Goal-Setting, and Career Success

Imagine running a marathon. Your end goal is to get to a finish line in a footrace.
However, you cannot just magically get there. Every step literally counts because getting to the finish line takes strictly as many steps as it takes, not a single one less. There are no shortcuts and cheat codes.
You need to take EVERY SINGLE LITTLE STEP along the way. That is the importance of short-term goals, in a nutshell. They are your steps and miles of running a marathon to a long-term goal.
But let’s see more career-applicable explanations and examples.

What Are Long-Term Goals?

Long-term goals are your bigger career aspirations. It is what you want to achieve in the next 3 to 10+ years. These goals shape your professional vision and self-identification as a professional.
These goals are a compass for your short-term actions.
Key long-term goal characteristics
Description
Timeframe
From half a year to up to 10 years.
Scope
Broad, visionary, and impactful.
Purpose
Provide direction and deep meaning to your occupation.
Defining components
  • Vision-driven- based on your desired lifestyle, values, and career purpose.
  • Strategic - involves long-term planning and consistency.
  • Evolving - can shift as your life, industry, or interests change.
  • Requires milestones - often broken down into short-term goals.
💡Some long-term goals examples are landing a senior or top-management position, or developing your own startup, achieving a particular lifestyle with a preferred career setting.

What Are Short-Term Goals?

Short-term goals are objectives you aim to achieve in the near future, typically within a few weeks to two years. They are concrete, actionable steps that move you closer to your long-term vision.
Key short-term goal characteristics
Description
Timeframe
Days, weeks, months. In general - up to half a year.
Scope
Narrow and focused.
Purpose
Build momentum, learn new skills, complete milestones.
Defining components
  • Specific - clearly defined tasks or actions.
  • Measurable - you can track progress easily.
  • Feasible - achievable with your current resources.
  • Relevant - tied to your bigger career direction.
💡Some short-term goals examples are finishing a course, applying to a particular number of positions daily, attending a number of networking events, etc.

How Can Short-Term Goals Best Lead Towards Accomplishing Long-Term Career Goals?

About 170 million jobs are emerging in this decade, 1,090 million jobs continue functioning, and 92 million jobs are about to get displaced - according to the Future of Jobs Report, 2025.
Does your long-term career goal fall under the extinction or a progressing category? How can you set long-term goals while you can’t still track all the urgent tasks you have now? How do you not burn out while running career marathons?
Surprisingly, achieving short-term goals can help you overcome all the obstacles in the way of your career success.
Let’s review the most popular cases of why long-term career success did not happen for you in the past and how long-term goals can help you.

Short-term Goals Reduce Obstacles

A common employee obstacle case:
You wish to develop a career roadmap and achieve your long-term goals more persistently. However, you are overloaded with ongoing urgent tasks and never have a chance to step back and think strategically about your career.
Short-term goal solution:
If a constant work-task jam is your case, resolving that is your first short-term goal that aligns with your global goal. Even though it is not as direct as, for example, “applying for 10 job positions”, it is what you need most to benefit long-term.
Examples of short-term goals for overload work issues:
  • Experiment with the Eisenhower Matrix (draw an X and Y axis, creating four quadrants):
X-axis: urgent → not urgent; Y-axis: important → not important. Place your tasks into four categories:
  1. Important and urgent - do it immediately
  2. Important and not urgent - schedule it for later
  3. Not important and urgent - delegate it
  4. Not important and not urgent - eliminate the task altogether
  • Check work priorities. Communicate with your manager about reducing low-priority tasks.
  • Evaluate your work effectiveness. Review whether you are doing some work that takes too much time and has no visible results.

Short-Term Goals Build Up Your Path

A common employee obstacle case:
You want to switch to a different career or role, but the possibility seems too unrealistic and complicated. You are not quite familiar with the role responsibilities, objectives, and workflows.
Short-term goal solution:
In the case of switching roles, beating uncertainty is your main-priority short-term goal. You cannot achieve what you don’t know first. Make the task of switching as clear as possible first.
Examples of short-term goals for job switching issues:
  • Research and write down job descriptions from currently open positions.
  • Research and write down the lists of technologies you will need.
  • Find 5 courses that teach necessary skills relevant to the role and choose the one to pass.
In fact, when achieving short-term goals, do not view them as “what do I have to find to reach the goal.” Instead, perceive them as “what do I have to reduce from my way to move easier (uncertainly, lacking, fears).

Short-Term Goals Save Your Efforts

A common employee obstacle case:
You want to build a desired career roadmap but are unsure of the market condition. You fear landing a low-paying job that has no further prospects because the niche is too narrow, and you don’t know how to find a broad and secure enough job title. You fear losing sight of really prospective opportunities.
Short-term goal solution:
Instead of jumping into job hunting blindly, you first need to understand the bigger picture - what roles exist, what’s in demand, and where your skills fit best. This crucial step will save you a lot of time, energy, and possible frustration later.
Examples of short-term goals for job switching issues:
  • List 5 job titles you’re considering and research salary, growth potential, and industry trends.
  • Talk to 2 professionals already working in those roles to learn about their real experiences.
  • Review LinkedIn or job boards weekly to track which job titles are consistently in demand.

How to Sync Short Term and Long Term Goals: Examples

Effective short and long-term goal setting requires checking only two boxes:
  • Short-term goals are as actionable and easy as possible
  • Long-term goals are as clear and objective as possible
Here are the examples of such goal synching:
Example 1
Long-term goals:
What: Land a senior front-end developer position in top company that pays X amount monthly and has A,B,C work culture features
Where: (list the desired companies list)
How: with good portfolio, open-source projects, and mentor support
When: in half a year
Short-term goals:
  1. Build and document 1 personal project using React, TypeScript, and a modern UI library
  2. Contribute to open-source project (research and name the project) or mentor junior devs on GitHub platform
  3. Complete a senior-level tech interview prep course (name the course)
Example 2
Long-term goals:
What: Earn a $2000 per month in salary
Where: (List companies title and freelance platforms)
How: By improving my personal pitch and applying regularly to relevant opportunities
When: Within the next 4 months
Short-term goals:
  1. Research and apply for at least 10 job opportunities per week that align with my experience and salary expectations
  2. Prepare a clear value proposition and collecting industry benchmarks
  3. Brainstorm on a freelance/side income stream
Example 3
Long-term goals:
What: Get hired into a remote position with a flexible schedule, realistic workload, and supportive team culture
Where: (List ideal companies or job boards)
How: By defining my ideal work conditions, researching company culture, and consulting with a career advisor
When: In the next 6 months
Short-term goals:
  1. Define my ideal remote work conditions and boundaries
  2. Research companies known for good work conditions
  3. Check with career consultant to estimate a job market
  4. Develop my communication skills

How to Set Long-Term Career Goals: 7 Popular Frameworks

We have collected 7 most common long-term goal setting frameworks and put ourselves in your shoes to detect the points that still cause your frustration even with all the techniques.
So let’s start with common framework overview:
Framework
Main components
SMART framework
Specific: Clearly define what you want to achieve.
Measurable: Include criteria to track progress.
Achievable: Set a realistic, attainable goal.
Relevant: Align the goal with your broader objectives.
Time-bound: Set a deadline or timeframe.
OKRs (objectives and key results)
Objective: Set a clear, inspiring goal.
Key Results: Define 2–5 specific, measurable outcomes that indicate progress toward the objective.
WOOP (wish, outcome, obstacle, plan)
Wish: Identify something you deeply want to achieve.
Outcome: Visualize the best possible result.
Obstacle: Recognize what could hold you back.
Plan: Create an "if-then" strategy to handle the obstacle.
HARD goals (heartfelt,animated, required, difficult)
Heartfelt: The goal matters emotionally to you.
Animated: You can vividly picture achieving it.
Required: It feels urgent and necessary.
Difficult: It challenges you and pushes your limits.
Reverse goal setting
Step 1: Set the final-end goal, the absolute perfect scenario you want to achieve.
Step 2: Trace back the goal building blocks, then divide these into smaller steps. Repeat until you track back to your current point.
GROW model (goal, reality, options, will)
Goal: Define what you want to achieve.
Reality: Understand where you are now.
Options: Explore possible strategies or paths.
Will: Choose actions and commit to them.
Goal holarchy approach
Purpose: Your life purpose, what makes your existence meaningful
Vision: Your aspirations of the best version of yourself
Mission: What you want to offer/bring to this world, ways you serve others and create value
Strategic goals: Your lighthouse, a direction for achieving your mission.
Tactical goals and objectives: Middle-term “Hows?”. Particular hypotheses to try for achieving strategic goals.
Action plans: Objectives, the plan of what you will do and by when.
Tasks and activities: Smallest-scope actions, your gaily to-do-lists.

Goal Setting Tips

Here we collected some relevant strategies as for of April 2025 to stay motivated, even when the reality seems surreal:
  • Align goals with your core values. Extrinsic motivation may appeal weaker in 2025 as we cannot rely on branded things or finances to be a stable motivator. However, you can still reach inside for your intrinsic motivation. What gives at least some bits of purpose to your days?
  • Focus on what you can control. In a world full of unpredictability, narrow your focus to the actions, routines, and habits that are within your direct control. It can be improving your skincare routine or a personal interest project. Do not perceive it as a little thing. Any goal that helps you feel alive and motivated is a good enough goal.
  • Distinguish between result goals and process goals. A goal should not necessarily be an achievement point. Your goal may be sustaining your good mood or taking walks daily.

To Sum Up

  • Long-term goals are your bigger career aspirations, determining what you want to achieve in the next 3 to 10+ years.
  • Effective short-term goals are concrete, actionable steps you aim to achieve within a few weeks or months that drive you to your visionary goals.
  • There are seven most common long-term goal setting frameworks: SMART goals, OKRs, WOOP framework, HARD goal framework, reverse goal setting, GROW method, and goal hierarchy approach.
  • To achieve the best results, stitch all the methods together and align your short and long-term goals.
  • Short-term goals help you to reduce obstacles, build up your path, and set efforts in achieving the long-term ones.
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Frequently asked questions

Short-term goals provide immediate focus and measurable progress in your professional life. They are your stepping stones toward your desired career. In particular, short-term goals help to reduce all obstacles preventing you from the next achievable steps.
Long-term goals are the objectives that define your professional development within the next 3 to 10 years. These goals reflect your vision for yourself, values, and ideal working environment.
Short-term goals are specific, actionable objectives that you aim to achieve within a relatively short period. These goals are practical, measurable, specific, and actionable.
Sources:
  • Murphy, M. (2010). Hard goals. McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing.
  • Pearson, G. (2025, April 10). Goals and goal-setting insights. polgovpro.blog. https://polgovpro.blog/2025/04/10/goals-and-goal-setting-insights/
  • Clear, J. (2022, August 31). Goal setting: A scientific guide to setting and achieving goals. James Clear. https://jamesclear.com/goal-setting
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