We all set goals that we want to achieve and we do that the whole time. This ranges from small tasks that have to be done to big-hairy-audacious-goals (BHAG). What strikes me is that to complet a task, most of the time it is not the ultimate reward that stimulates you to give the best of yourself. For instance, the vision of yourself competing in a triathlon competition does not really help to get out of bed in the morning to run your miles. Indeed, in the long run you need this kind of future vision but in the short run other factors come in play. What really helps are achieving chopped up bits of your long-term goal. Goals like: complete an amount of files by that time, run that amount of miles by next week. With this notion we make the ultimate goal more achievable and more concrete. However, the goals that we set that way can cloud the ultimate goal that is behind it. If you set the goal of running 30 minutes and really stick to those 30 mins (not 29 not 31), it can get a bit ridiculous. In that way those goals appear to be mechanic.
Bottom line: We need those long-term BHAG’s, those pinky perfect goals far in the future. To achieve them we need short-term achievable goals to get the action going.
