Any goal is about making a difference. When you have long-term goal you realize that it’s big, requires lots of time and energy, and results are long way from now. So you need to break it down to smaller goals that provide you feasible results and quick wins.
Initially looking at long-term goal you don’t have a clear plan. You can easily fall into planning procrastination. You will spend hours to come up with great plan for your big goal. The problem is whatever plan you may have, you will need to change it as you go. That’s just how it works. During your journey you’ll find out new information, learn new things, and eventually you will see other (often better) options to achieve the big goal.
So instead of everlasting planning it’s better to just split long-term goal into a couple of initial short-term goals. In my opinion these small goals should be action-oriented. This will quickly switch you from planning to action mode.
Here are key benefits of action-oriented goals:
- You’re in control to achieve the goal. In action-oriented goal result is about you doing something. It never depends on other people doing something for you. So as long as you work on the goal consistently you control if you will achieve result or not.
- Momentum of not overthinking. When defining action-oriented goal you decide what you will do. So there is no need for extra planning and decisions.
- It’s easy to understand exact actions. Because actions are predefined by the goal itself, you have actions list. There is no need to review them unless you clearly see that this whole goal doesn’t make sense and needs to be dropped.
- It’s easier to achieve (if you put in the work). Whether you achieve action-oriented goal or not solely depends on you. When you do the work and do it consistently then achieving the goal is inevitable.
- You can build routines and habit of acting. As you work on action-oriented goal you find your pace, time when you can work, and a process. Then you can transform this into a routine or repeatable process leading you to achieving your big goal.
Starting working on new long-term goal is always not easy. At the very beginning it’s hard to create traction. Later it’s hard to keep being motivated. Creating a couple of action-oriented goals helps to get going and find the rhythm. Once you have momentum, motivation will follow. When you have motivation, you keep going. It’s a perfect cycle.