• Setting short-term goals can help you in a variety of ways.discussing achievment image by Steve Johnson from Fotolia.com
  
  Author Brian Tracy, in his motivational book "Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time," says, "Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement." However, the kind of fuel or goals you utilize to increase your level of achievement can vary between short and long term. Short-term goals can be set to help you achieve your monetary, productivity, personal and long-term dreams.
  
  

Productivity Goals

• Productivity goals tend to focus on the amount of work or tasks you want to complete in a given time period. Examples might include setting goals to read so many pages of a textbook in one day or to finish the laundry before going out at night. These goals are useful because they allow you to tackle large quantities of work by segmenting them and assigning deadlines for completion.
  
  

Monetary Goals

• Monetary goals establish amounts of money you want to save, spend or accumulate in a given amount of time. Examples might include wanting to make $300 in commission in one day, wanting to save 10 percent of every paycheck, or wanting to find a camera for a certain price. These goals are valuable for people who are living on a budget or attempting to reach larger goals that revolve around cash flow.
  
  

Personal Growth Goals

• Personal growth goals demand a specific personal improvement in a short amount of time. Examples of these goals might include losing a certain amount of weight in a week, learning a new song on the piano in a month, or organizing your office by the end of the day. These tasks are oriented around improving your abilities or lifestyle instead of completing tasks, which is what makes them different from productivity goals. They can be important for people who are trying to change their habits or lifestyle.
  
  

Incremental Goals

• Incremental goals are part of a series of goals set up in an attempt to reach a long-term goal. They may take on the qualities of any of the previously described goals, but should be linked to the completion of other goals in sequence. For example, a person might set a goal of saving $200 in a week, followed by another goal of saving $300 in a week, leading up to a long-term goal of purchasing a used car. These goals are useful in establishing benchmarks for progress toward big or complex long-term goals.