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Better Goals - Finding Cohesion Between Your Long and Short Term Goals

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cottrell examines the fundamental nature of goals and proposes a framework for creating cohesion between long-term and short-term objectives. He begins by distinguishing between two types of goals: measurable short-term goals that follow frameworks like SMART, and long-term goals that are more about states of being and identity.

Cottrell argues that long-term goals are often expressed in identity language—“who I want to be” rather than “what I want to achieve.” Examples include becoming the kind of person who runs a marathon, earns a PhD, or starts a business. These identity-based goals connect to our deepest motivations and sense of purpose, making them fundamentally different from tactical, measurable objectives.

The episode explores how reframing long-term goals as identity cultivation changes the nature of short-term planning. Instead of charting a direct path to an achievement, we can focus on behaviors that align with the identity we want to develop. For instance, someone aiming to become a PhD holder might focus on reading more regularly, which cultivates the identity of a scholar regardless of whether they eventually enroll in a formal program.

Cottrell provides practical homework: first identify the common identity themes in your long-term goals, then examine how your short-term goals connect to that desired identity. This creates cohesion where pursuing one goal naturally supports others, transforming goals from arbitrary targets into guidelines for personal development. The episode concludes by emphasizing that cohesive goals working toward a unified identity make progress more intuitive and sustainable.

Recommendations

Communities

  • Developer Tea Discord — Recommended multiple times as a free community where engineers can discuss day-to-day challenges, questions, and professional development with peers facing similar issues.

Tools

  • Square APIs and SDKs — Mentioned during the sponsor segment as tools developers can use to build customized solutions for sellers, extending or integrating with Square’s platform to solve business problems.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to goal concepts and measurement — Jonathan introduces the episode’s focus on goals, distinguishing between his own podcast goal (providing clarity, perspective, purpose) and how he measures it through listener feedback. He sets up the central question: what is a goal in reality, and how do we use goals differently in our careers?
  • 00:01:12 — Distinguishing long-term vs short-term goals — The host explains the fundamental difference between long-term goals (states of being, identity, emotionally measured) and short-term goals (measurable, SMART framework, pass/fail). He notes that we often disconnect these two types, keeping them in separate parts of our lives with different purposes and measurement systems.
  • 00:04:25 — Long-term goals as identity expression — Jonathan asks listeners to identify a long-term goal and explains that these are often articulated through identity language: “this is who I want to be.” Examples include running a marathon, earning a PhD, or starting a company—not just as achievements but as becoming the kind of person who would do these things.
  • 00:06:05 — Deriving goals from identity rather than achievement — The host illustrates how identity-based goals change your approach. If you want to become a PhD holder rather than just earn a PhD, your intermediate steps focus on cultivating scholarly behaviors (like reading regularly) rather than just tactical steps toward enrollment. This creates more opportunities and different pathways.
  • 00:07:41 — Homework: connecting short-term and long-term goals — Jonathan assigns practical work: examine your goals for connections. First identify the identity themes in long-term goals, then see how short-term goals relate to that identity. He provides examples like a promotion potentially serving both financial autonomy and leadership recognition goals, showing how one short-term goal can serve multiple identity aims.
  • 00:09:54 — Creating cohesive goal systems — The episode concludes by discussing cohesion—when goals work together toward a unified identity. Cohesive goals act as guidelines and markers rather than arbitrary targets, making progress more intuitive. When you pursue one cohesive goal, you naturally advance others, creating a more effective personal development system.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2022-10-12T19:15:00Z
  • Duration: 00:12:26

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] What is a goal in the first place?

[00:00:14] How should you be thinking about your goals?

[00:00:18] My name is Jonathan Cottrell.

[00:00:19] You’re listening to Developer Tea.

[00:00:21] My goal in the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose

[00:00:25] in their careers.

[00:00:28] You just heard me mention a goal here.

[00:00:31] I’m kind of breaking my own rules.

[00:00:33] How do I measure whether or not we’re providing clarity, perspective, and purpose?

[00:00:38] The primary measurement that I use is kind of a soft one.

[00:00:41] I wait on your reviews.

[00:00:44] I wait on your feedback.

[00:00:45] I learn from our Discord community.

[00:00:48] You can join that at developertea.com slash discord.

[00:00:53] What is a goal in reality?

[00:00:56] We use goals in two kind of completely different ways in our careers.

[00:01:03] Often the terminology is what gets mixed up.

[00:01:07] On the one hand, we have our long-term goals.

[00:01:12] On the other hand, we have the goals that we’ve been talking about more recently in

[00:01:16] the last episode of this show, our short-term goals.

[00:01:19] The ones that would follow the smart framework, the ones that we can measure, the ones that

[00:01:23] we can say pass, fail on.

[00:01:26] Our long-term goals, we have a hard time imagining that we will reach a point where we say that

[00:01:35] we have failed that long-term goal.

[00:01:38] In fact, much of the measurement of those long-term goals is done in our minds.

[00:01:46] It’s done emotionally.

[00:01:48] And that’s because these goals are not really measurable goals after all.

[00:01:54] Instead, they are states of being, of identity.

[00:02:00] If they are measurable, those measures are simply indicators of what we expect our state

[00:02:06] of being to be, what we expect our emotional realization of that moment to feel like.

[00:02:14] So in today’s episode, I want to focus on this larger idea of goal orientation for our

[00:02:20] long-term goals.

[00:02:21] We’re going to reframe this concept and use it to inform those shorter-term goals.

[00:02:29] These two concepts are often kept in different parts of our life.

[00:02:34] The short-term goals are the kinds of goals that we want to achieve in order to, for example,

[00:02:40] get a promotion next year or in order to get a good performance review at work.

[00:02:47] We may have short-term goals in our personal lives, like clean out that closet this weekend

[00:02:52] or finish that project, that side project that we’ve been wanting to finish forever.

[00:02:59] But we often disconnect these from our long-term goals.

[00:03:03] I want you to take a moment while you’re listening to this episode and identify one, just one,

[00:03:10] of your long-term goals.

[00:03:13] While you’re thinking about that, we’ll take a quick break to talk about our sponsor.

[00:03:26] This episode of Developer Tea is made possible by Square.

[00:03:29] There are millions of sellers across the globe using Square to run every aspect of their business.

[00:03:35] This is almost ubiquitous at this point.

[00:03:37] We’ve almost certainly used something powered by Square in the last week and maybe even

[00:03:42] in the last day or a couple of hours.

[00:03:44] Many of those sellers are looking for customized solutions that are deeply connected and easy

[00:03:49] to use.

[00:03:50] This is where you, as a developer, can come in.

[00:03:53] You grow your own business by extending or integrating with Square, using Square’s free

[00:03:58] APIs and SDKs to build specific tools for sellers, help them solve their problems, and

[00:04:05] earn more for your business in the process.

[00:04:08] Head over to developertea.com slash Square to get started today.

[00:04:12] That’s developertea.com slash Square.

[00:04:15] Thanks again to Square for sponsoring today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:04:23] What is your long-term goal?

[00:04:25] We’re going to have to talk about all of them in today’s episode.

[00:04:28] We want to discuss one of those goals.

[00:04:31] What is it?

[00:04:33] Very often, the way that we articulate these long-term goals is through some identity language.

[00:04:40] In other words, this is who I want to be.

[00:04:45] Maybe you have a long-term achievement that you’ve always wanted to reach.

[00:04:49] You’ve always wanted to run a marathon.

[00:04:52] You’ve always wanted to earn your PhD.

[00:04:55] Maybe you’ve always wanted to start a company.

[00:04:58] These long-term goals, though they may be able to be measured as pass-fail, are often

[00:05:04] not necessarily tactical.

[00:05:07] We’re not trying to just earn any PhD.

[00:05:11] We’re not trying to just push our bodies once to run a marathon.

[00:05:18] We’re trying to become the kind of person who would run a marathon.

[00:05:23] We’re trying to become the kind of person who would earn a PhD.

[00:05:27] We’re trying to become the kind of person who would start a business.

[00:05:32] When we have these identity-related goals, they often speak directly to our core and

[00:05:41] deepest motivations.

[00:05:45] This is the grounds that you’ll find your purpose.

[00:05:48] What is it about earning a PhD that you care about?

[00:05:53] What are the aspects of that identity that you would like to start to develop in yourself?

[00:06:02] From this, we can derive other goals.

[00:06:05] Notice that if you’re trying to become the kind of person who earns a PhD, your goals

[00:06:12] along the way, your milestones, whatever you want to call those, the stepping stones between

[00:06:20] where you are and becoming the kind of person who has a PhD, those intermediary steps will

[00:06:26] be different.

[00:06:28] You have more opportunities than if you were just trying to earn a PhD.

[00:06:36] Notice that just trying to earn a PhD, your first steps might be to get accepted into

[00:06:41] a PhD program, maybe find one that you can afford, very tactical in nature.

[00:06:48] But instead, if you were trying to become the kind of person who holds a PhD, the goals

[00:06:56] might change.

[00:06:57] The theme of the goals becomes less about trying to chart your pathway towards a PhD

[00:07:03] and instead more about adjusting your behaviors.

[00:07:08] The kind of person who earns a PhD, for example, may read more often than the average person.

[00:07:16] This is almost certainly true.

[00:07:18] And so you may set a goal for yourself that has nothing to do directly with earning the

[00:07:25] PhD, but does absolutely have something to do with cultivating the who, the identity,

[00:07:34] the long-term goal of what you want to become.

[00:07:39] So here’s your homework.

[00:07:41] you have some goals, both short-term and long-term.

[00:07:47] Your goal is to try to understand, number one, if they connect and if so, how?

[00:07:54] Start by looking at those long-term goals.

[00:07:57] Identify what in those goals is common.

[00:08:02] What are those goals saying about who you want to be?

[00:08:05] How are they expressing your identity goals?

[00:08:10] And then secondly, once you have the identity identified in those goals, look at your short-term

[00:08:16] goals.

[00:08:18] How do these connect to who you want to be?

[00:08:22] Maybe you have a short-term goal of achieving a promotion in the next two years.

[00:08:29] And then perhaps even smaller goals that help you walk the path every quarter or so in order

[00:08:35] to achieve that promotion.

[00:08:38] You may also have two long-term goals that you identify.

[00:08:42] One is to become the kind of person who is able to make decisions about how they spend

[00:08:48] their time freely.

[00:08:50] This would require some level of kind of financial autonomy and getting a promotion may carry

[00:08:56] you towards that.

[00:08:58] Another goal might be that you want to become a respected leader in your field.

[00:09:03] Once again, a promotion may be able to carry you in that direction.

[00:09:09] However, there are many other possible goals that could carry you towards those two longer-term

[00:09:16] goals.

[00:09:18] Once you have those longer-term goals ironed out, your identity goals, then you can take

[00:09:24] a look at those shorter-term goals and determine, are there other ways that I haven’t considered

[00:09:29] yet?

[00:09:30] Are there other tactics that I could use?

[00:09:32] Or maybe my short-term goals need a little bit of refinement.

[00:09:36] Maybe it’s not necessarily a promotion that I’m interested in.

[00:09:39] It’s wider reach or more exposure.

[00:09:43] Maybe it’s just simply earning more money.

[00:09:47] By looking at your goals in this holistic manner, you’re creating a more cohesive solution.

[00:09:54] We’re going to talk about cohesion quite a bit when it relates to our goals because when

[00:09:59] our goals work together, they become more intuitively connected to each other.

[00:10:05] In other words, when you start thinking about your goals in terms of the kind of identity

[00:10:09] that you’re cultivating, this cohesion of your goals, instead of your goals kind of

[00:10:16] acting as rules or purely as targets, arbitrary targets, they act as guidelines for that identity.

[00:10:26] They act as markers, as measurements along the way.

[00:10:30] Having good cohesion between your goals, leading you to the identity that you care about cultivating

[00:10:37] will often mean that by pursuing one goal, you are naturally pursuing the others as well.

[00:10:46] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer T. Thank you again to Square

[00:10:49] for sponsoring today’s episode.

[00:10:51] Head over to developert.com slash Square to get started today with Square’s free APIs

[00:10:57] and SDKs, building tools for millions of sellers around the globe.

[00:11:02] Thanks so much for listening to this episode.

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