“If you don’t have time to do it right you must have time to do it over”. ~Author Unknown

Last week I had the rare opportunity to meet one of the top three world’s futurologists (as it turns out “futurology” is a profession!). This highly successful man gets paid $20,000 by such corporations as IBM and BMW for making a 45 minute speech on the future of innovations. We started talking and he said a very curious thing, “People are predisposed to think in two categories: short-term and long-term perspective. I get paid a lot of money, not because I am smarter than most of the innovation consultants out there, but because I am one of the few specialists who makes mid-term predictions. ”

This phrase for some reason stuck with me and made me notice something I have never thought of before. In goal-setting all the “experts” advice us to break goals in two categories:  short-term goals and long-term goals. We have all accepted this as a given, because it makes sense to us. And yet how many of us continuously underestimate how much time it will take us to achieve our goals and later feel frustrated about not being able to meet our deadlines?

Maybe the real problem lies in the system itself and not in our inability to plan our actions steps correctly?

Let me explain this…

Short-term goals are generally defined as those that may be achieved in one year or less. While short-term goals are easy and motivating there are a few serious problems:

1.  We often confuse short-term goals as tasks on our to-do lists. As a result we set too many of them and later feel overwhelmed and stressed out.

2. Our short-term goals are often competing with one another. For example, you may want to pay off your credit card debt, save money for a car down payment. But at the same time you dream about a two week vacation in Thailand and you also know that you need to buy your mom a Birthday present. These goals do not seem contradictive, but they all compete for one of your most important resources – money.

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