Short & Long term goals
Long-term goals (dream goals) are great because they fill you with a sense of direction and purpose. Meaningful changes in your life will take time, and thus there will always be a need to set long-term goals.
However, It's easy to lose sight of your long-term goals if you don't narrow your focus. For the goal setting process to be most effective, you need to establish some short term 'stepping stones' along the way. This is where many people fail, as they do not make the link between achieving their long-term goals and undertaking the necessary daily actions required to achieve them.
Short-term goals provide you with a number of advantages to setting a long-term goal alone. It gives you the chance for regular feedback, and thus opportunities to enhance confidence, persistence, and motivation as you make progress towards your goal. People tend to be motivated by piece-by-piece incentives (i.e., earn rewards as you go), more than a one off bonus reward at the end, when dealing with a difficult task (Mowen, Middlemist, and Luther, 1981). If you are not making the improvements you expected, you can make adjustments to your strategies (or goals) as required.
Research into goal setting has generally shown setting a combination of short-term and long-term goals is the most effective strategy in improving performance. For example, Tenenbaum, Pinchas, Elbaz, Bar-Eli, and Weinberg (1991) completed a 10-week study on the effect of goal setting on a muscular endurance exercise (how many sit-ups can be completed in 3-minutes). 214 participants were randomly assigned to one of the following groups:
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No goals (no goal set)
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Do your best goals
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Short-term goals (only set weekly performance goals)
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Long-term goals (only set an end goal)
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Combination of short-term and long-term goals
A baseline measure of performance was obtained. Then participants were tested once per week over a 10 week period. The results showed that the group who used the combination of short-term and long-term goal exhibited the greatest increase in performance. The short-term goal group and the long-term goal group also showed significant improvements in performance compared to the do your best and no goal group, which suggests any goal is better than no goal.
MODULE GOAL SETTING
Goal setting guidelines
References
Mowen, J.C., Middlemist, R.D., & Luther, D. (1981). Joint effects of assigned goal level and incentive structure on task performance: A laboratory study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 66 (5), 598-603.