How to Define Short-Term Career Goals You Can Pursue Right Now

Short-term career goals shouldn’t involve huge changes like switching careers or getting that big promotion, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on those dreams, either. Think of your humble short-term career goals as building blocks: Each one is helping you build toward your larger goal. You don’t have to worry about standing up the whole building — all you have to do is lay the next brick. 

It all starts with a solid plan. Identify what you want to build, break it down into its constituent parts, and then start assembling those parts one at a time. Here’s how to get started:

1. Work backward from your long-term goals

In her course on Taking Charge of Your Career, Christine DiDonato says that “the easiest way to set career goals is to work backward.” 

“Begin with a question,” she says. “What needs to be in place for your career vision to become a reality? What major milestones will you need to achieve?”

Chances are the major milestones you work out at this stage won’t exactly be short-term goals. DiDonato recommends breaking these milestones down once again, this time into a series of shorter-term goals. 

After taking this step, you’ll have a list of major milestones, along with bullet point short-term goals that will help you accomplish those milestones. From here, pick one of your major milestones to tackle — preferably the one that feels most achievable. “These are usually ones that can take anywhere from one to three years to achieve,” DiDonato says. 

Finally, DiDonato says, “identify two to five shorter term goals that, if achieved, would give you the best possible chance at achieving your milestone.” If you keep this in mind, those bigger goals will start to feel a lot more achievable and less intimidating.

2. Make your goals SMART

Now that you have an idea of the short-term career goals you’d like to pursue, it’s time to start evaluating how you will complete them. The first step in this process is to understand your goals as clearly as possible, so you know exactly how to approach completing them.

In Performance Management: Setting Goals and Managing Performance, Todd Dewett lays out his version of the popular SMART framework that you can use to define how you will approach completing your short-term goals. Dewett breaks it down like this:

• Specific: “A specific goal is finite and clear,” he says. “For example, a goal to improve sales is vague, but a goal to increase sales by 15% across two product lines within three geographies is specific.”
• Measurable: “Your task,” he says, “is to know how to measure the goal without spending too much time or money.”
• Aligned: “The goals you set must work together,” he says, “not be in opposition to each other.”
• Reachable: “Your goals,” he says, “should be motivational and moderately challenging, but not overwhelming.”
• Time-bound: “Your goal should have due dates on a calendar,” he says. “Without a clear end in sight, planning and achievement become far more difficult.”
  

Next, take the time to incorporate each of the two to five short-term career goals you defined in step one into the SMART framework:

• Specific: Re-write your goal to define what success looks like in the most specific terms possible. Be sure to include a concrete metric of success.
• Measurable: Define a strategy for how you will measure progress toward the specific success you outlined above. 
• Aligned: Make sure that pursuing one of your goals won’t conflict with achieving the others. Look for ways you can work on multiple goals at once by taking the same steps. 
• Reachable: Ensure that the success you defined is realistically achievable within a relatively short period of time, and define exactly how you’ll know you’ve achieved it.
• Time-bound: Give yourself a specific due date for completing your goal and stick to it. If your short-term goal has multiple steps, assign a due date for each step.
  

If you find it difficult to apply this framework to your current short-term career goals, it’s a sign that those goals may not be concrete or realistic enough to be achievable. Keep adjusting your goals until you find two to five that you can fit into this framework comfortably. 

3. Focus on one goal at a time, starting with the most exciting one

It’s easy to make pursuing your short-term career goals feel overly analytical. You get so focused on the frameworks you’re applying that before you know it, you’ve lost sight of why you were motivated to start this process in the first place. 

In Setting a Vision: How to Gain Clarity on Your Goals, instructor Mechelle McDonald teaches simple steps for creating your goal completion plan without losing sight of your “why.” It starts by choosing one of your two to five short term career goals to begin pursuing. Crucially, McDonald recommends starting with the goal you’re most excited about, which you can determine by following her two-step process.

Choosing your top goal

1. When reviewing your list of top goals, carefully consider the emotions connected to each. Write them down and be as detailed as possible.
2. Review the goals based on their emotional description. Which goals connect with you the most and why?
   

“Based on your response to this question, select your top goal,” McDonald says. This is the goal you’re most emotionally attached to, which means it's the goal you’re most likely to remain invested in throughout the process. 

Once you’ve identified the first goal you want to pursue, all that’s left is to formalize your plan for completing it. McDonald recommends breaking down your SMART goal one last time to create a numbered list of steps you can take toward achieving it by following this three-step process:

Building a timeline for completing your top goal

1. Define the general steps needed to accomplish your goal, and break them down into the smallest tasks possible.
2. Consider if you can truly complete this goal in three to six months, now that you’ve laid out your tasks.
3. Review your timeline and make changes as needed. Assign a due date to every numbered task you’ve just defined. 
   

When you have your list of steps, it’s time to get started. To keep from getting overwhelmed, take your list one step at a time. If you ever come up against a task that seems too big to start on right away, try breaking it down even further until you know exactly what to do right at that moment, then do it. 

The secret to accomplishing any goal is simply to put one foot in front of the other. Follow this process, and you’ll have everything you need to take your first step now.