There are many things on my project lists, and they fall into two categories. Most of them are ones that are short-term and have a specific outcome. The rest are long-term goals. By shifting how I view these long-term goals, I make better goals and have made a lot more progress in a short amount of time
The Types of Project Project Goals
Immediate Goals
Immediate goals are things that are short-timed and have a well defined outcome.
For example, “Complete Python Book” is the goal to work through the python programming book that I am studying to pick up the language.
“Eliminate and Consolidate Streaming Services” consists of going through all our subscriptions, determining the usage, and removing the ones we don’t use. It also means checking to make sure that we only pay for one instance of each service.
Long Term Goals
Long-term goals require (ideally) daily attention. These are the things that are practicing, like languages and musical instruments. Also in this category are behavior changes like diet and exercise.
Two of my long-term goals revolve around practicing percussion and using DuoLingo to learn German. These both require daily work to make sustained progress. Skipping six days and doing a two hour session on the seventh is not an effective way to approach these.
How I Wrote Long-Term Project Goals
During each weekly planning session, I look at all my projects and fit in time to do them. I may have a free evening that I can devote to blogging or working on my programming book. I keep these on my weekly plan with the outcome. They would be listed as “write 3 articles” or “complete 3 chapters of the python book” or “list all streaming services from bank statements”.
I may block off time to do the long-term project goals, but it is typically daily. My goals for these would appear on the list as “practice percussion 7 times” or “do Duolingo 7 times”.
It’s not that this was bad – I was practicing and languaging (it’s a word now) every day. And I was making progress.
Changing How I Wrote Long-Term Project Goals
I decided to experiment and change up how I wrote my long term goals.
Instead of “practice percussion 7 times” it became “Get exercise 67 to 72 bpm”. Instead of “Do Duolingo 7 times” it became “Do Duo to end of Unit 26 Section 4”.
It’s a subtle shift. It still requires that I work on these long-term goals every day.
The Outcome
What I found is that I started to make more rapid progress on my long-term goals.
I am working an average of one week per two percussion exercises. It used to be a couple of weeks per one.
I used to take four to five weeks to complete a DuoLingo unit. Now I complete one in two weeks.
In Conclusion
I have found that changing how I write goals from number of sessions to specific outcomes for my goals makes the goals more meaningful and leads to faster progress. The number of sessions remain roughly the same – but I am more productive in those sessions because I have a clear target to work toward rather than just “putting in the time.” By making this subtle shift in how I word my goals, I’ve seen significant improvements in my progress on long-term projects.
