Goal-setting strategies for project managers

You may want to land a promotion by next year. Or finally launch your Etsy store. Or hit a professional milestone, like becoming a team lead. Is this the year you learn water skiing while juggling a flaming baton?

You have plenty of goals, both for yourself and for your team. Maybe you’re launching a new product, improving a process, or fixing a workflow that’s slowing everyone down. 

Clear, measurable goals create focus, drive motivation, and make progress easier to track. Without them, it’s easy for priorities to shift and momentum to fade.

You might already be setting goals without even realizing it. The difference is doing it intentionally and building a plan you can actually follow.

What is goal setting?

Goal setting is the process of defining an objective and deciding how you’ll work toward it.

There are tons of goal-setting worksheets and theories out there, all geared toward helping you reach your goals.

Effective goal setting involves using specific techniques and strategies—such as making SMART goals—to clarify objectives, improve leadership skills, and increase your chances of success. 

Here are some practical goal-setting tips: 

• Use worksheets

• Follow proven strategies

• Apply best practices (we’ll cover these later)

Speaking of goals, spare us a moment to be obvious here. Most goals fall into two categories: short-term and long-term.

A short-term goal is something you aim to complete soon, typically within the next year. That could be beating your best five-mile run time by the end of this month or working with your team to roll out a new onboarding process by the end of the quarter.

Your long-term goals need more of your time. They are things that you could be working toward for more than a year—or even several.

An example of a long-term goal could be running your department in the next five years, or opening a pooch-pampering studio by the time you’re 40. Maybe your team hopes to stop outsourcing and bring everything in-house eventually.

Juggling short-term and long-term goals at the same time really keeps you on your toes, but the good news is that the process for setting them is the same.

Why is goal setting worth the effort?

Goal setting helps you focus on what matters most. Here are a few benefits:

1. Helps you find your focus

It’s not hard to think of things you and your team want to accomplish. On any given day, you might want to knock out your to-do list, run a productive brainstorm, and keep projects moving.

Your brain is jam-packed with the things that you’d like to get done. But, actually making all of those things happen is where the trouble starts.

That’s the beauty of goal setting. It makes you think through what you need and create a timeline for getting it all done. With this groundwork in place, you’re better able to focus your efforts and energy on the things you most want to conquer.

Intentionally spending time on actions that directly contribute to your most significant goals ensures that your efforts are aligned with what truly matters.

2. Helps you stay on track

In our definition of goal setting, you’ll notice we used the word “process.” That’s because goal setting shouldn’t be done haphazardly; it calls for a structured approach.

Most frameworks and theories say to get specific, consider important metrics, set an end date, and lay the foundation for making your goal a reality. It’s essential to establish clear criteria for measuring progress and maintaining momentum toward achieving objectives.

Environmental defaults and decision making play a crucial role in your ability to stay on track—by intentionally designing your surroundings and default options, you can positively influence your choices and support successful goal achievement.

This structure helps you monitor progress and stay on track, rather than relying on a vague intention.

3. Helps you motivate yourself

Setting a goal feels way more permanent and definite than just saying, “Oh, hopefully we’ll get to that thing eventually…”

That’s the point. Goal setting boosts accountability for you and your team, which means you’re far more inspired to follow through.

Kickstart your motivation by sharing that goal with someone you trust (yep, your team members count). In one study at Dominican University, 70% of participants who set a goal and sent progress updates to a friend reported achieving it. Creating a supportive community can also provide inspiration and accountability, making it easier to stay on track and motivated.

Achieving one goal can inspire you to pursue other goals, fostering continuous motivation, growth, and confidence.

What are some different types of goals?

Not all goals do the same job. Using a mix of goal types helps you build momentum now while staying aligned with bigger, long-term priorities.

• Short-term goals: Near-term milestones you can complete in weeks or a few months. They keep teams focused on immediate priorities and create quick wins (for example, improve your team’s content review workflow by the end of the quarter).

• Long-term goals: Bigger outcomes that take months or years. These anchor your strategy and guide sustained effort (for example, build a company-wide content governance framework).

• SMART goals: Goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. They reduce ambiguity and make progress easier to track (for example, “Increase content clarity scores by 15% in six months using an automated scoring system,” instead of “Improve content quality.”)

• Measurable goals: Goals with clear metrics you can track over time. Measurement keeps progress visible, supports accountability, and makes it easier to celebrate wins.

A balanced mix of short-term and long-term goals—written in SMART, measurable terms—keeps you moving forward while staying on track.

How to set goals you want to stick to

Here’s how to set goals you can actually follow through on. Developing effective setting strategies is crucial—by planning, evaluating your progress, and implementing actionable techniques, you can ensure you achieve your goals. Without proper support and planning, however, objectives can quickly lose momentum, making it harder to achieve your goals.

1. Pick a goal-setting program

In some ways, setting a goal could be as simple as downloading a podcast for your commute. If you follow a framework, you’ll make sure everything comes together smoothly. Here are just a few to consider:

• SMART goals: SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. This framework helps you set effective goals that are clear, purposeful, and aligned with your values. It also emphasizes the importance of setting achievable goals—objectives that are realistic yet challenging enough to inspire growth and maintain motivation. Find out more details about SMART goals, as well as some SMART objective examples to get started.

• Objectives and key results (OKRs): When setting OKRs, you’ll define high-level, qualitative, aspirational goals (remember, OKRs are meant to be lofty!) and assign a result and an owner to each. Then you’ll use OKR scoring at regular intervals to check your progress, detect objectives at risk of being unmet, and course-correct as necessary.  We use this goal-setting methodology here at Atlassian, and we even have a handy OKR template you can use to do this yourself. You can also check out this playbook for more OKR best practices and OKR examples.

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): KPIs often get confused with OKRs. But an OKR vs. KPI matchup shows how they differ. Unlike with an OKR, KPIs require that you assign a measurable target to an existing project or process. For example, you want to improve the effectiveness of your customer support team. You could set a KPI for a specific number of customer tickets resolved per week. KPIs also use “leading indicators” and “lagging indicators” to predict future success rather than to demonstrate past success in achieving results.

There’s no one right framework to choose. It’s all about what you need and what gets you to your desired outcome easily.

2. Be specific

Regardless of which framework you choose, it's important to be specific about what you're trying to achieve. It's hard to work with vague objectives like “serve our customers better” and “be a happier team,” and it's even harder to track progress toward those nebulous goals.

That's why you need to challenge yourself to dig deeper and drill down to a specific end game. Ask yourself, “What does being a ‘happier team' really look like?” Maybe that means having more time for bonding outside of work projects. OK, how? By hosting regularly scheduled happy hours and team-wide events. 

By continuing to get down to the nitty-gritty, you might end up with a goal that's way more clear-cut, like, “Schedule regular team activities.” That provides far more direction than “be a happier team.”

3. Make it measurable

You’ve articulated what you want to achieve, but now you have to sort out when it’s time to pat yourself on the back. You need to know what success looks like.

Let’s return to our team bonding example for some clarity. What does it mean to “regularly” host those get-togethers? How often? Lock all this down with a number you can stick to so that you can hold yourself accountable.

When you’re done, your goal might look something like this: “Schedule at least one team-wide activity per month.”

Now you know exactly what you expect of yourself and your team. But remember that this isn’t a set-and-forget exercise. You actually have to follow through and track how well you’re doing. Here on the Confluence team, we use Signals and Measures to keep a close eye on our progress toward goals. You can find out more about those in this playbook. Using digital tools or structured approaches to track your progress is essential for staying accountable and ensuring you’re moving toward your goals.

4. Set a deadline

Goals usually don’t get to stretch out into infinity exactly as they are; they either come to an end or they evolve.

Here’s where your deadline comes in, especially for goals that don’t require daily effort. Setting deadlines is a crucial step in goal setting and project management, as it helps ensure progress and accountability. Establishing a clear timeline with deadlines can help reduce procrastination and create a sense of urgency. Set an end date so you know exactly how long you have to achieve your objective.

Your deadline can be a date, a period of time, a big hurrah in the future, or all three. For example, when it comes to getting your team out and about for some time together, giving yourself a deadline changes your goal to something like, “Schedule at least one team-wide activity per month and share the calendar of upcoming events by the first Thursday of every quarter.”

Having that firm end date keeps you on track because you know you don’t have forever to get it done.

5. Write it down

Take that goal you worked so hard on, write it down, and then put it somewhere you look at every day. Tape it to your computer monitor or your bathroom mirror. Add it to your calendar or your phone's smart assistant. Or, tell your team and ask them to help you stay on the program by checking in regularly.

When you write goals, you turn abstract ideas into tangible actions, which enhances motivation, clarifies your intentions, and increases your commitment to achieving them.

Obviously, writing down your objective isn’t legally binding or anything. However, you might be surprised that, even without the threat of legal action, it can increase your chances of achieving what you set out to do.

When writing down your goal, you’ll want to keep all the details in one place: your deadline, action plan, and any supporting resources (think things like card trick instructions or a log of your practice time!) you might need. Using Confluence is an awesome way to document your goals, monitor your progress, and keep supporting information together, as it allows for flexibility and growth as your goal evolves.

6. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize

You did it, you focused, driven, super-achieving goal maven. And that’s it. You’re done! Now that you’re a certified goal-smasher, you’re likely to have many things you want to achieve at any given moment. Unfortunately, there’s only one you, and cloning oneself isn’t a thing yet. Your attention and energy will be all over the place.

You’ll have better luck if you put all your goals in order of importance and value, start with the first one, and then chip away at the others from there. Long-term objectives provide a foundation for personal and professional development, helping you prioritize which goals will have the most lasting impact. 

For example, you might set long-term objectives like advancing your career, improving your health, or becoming a team captain to develop leadership skills and gain respect.

A prioritization matrix can help you with this. It’ll guide you in categorizing your goals by urgency and impact so that you can start with your most important effort.

Best practices for carrying out your goals

If only setting the goal was the goal. That would make things a lot easier, but you won’t get very far with that approach.

This is where many people and teams fall short. They assume that saying the thing is the same as doing the thing. Avoid this trap by creating an action plan. To make your action plan effective, focus on setting realistic goals and breaking them down into incremental steps. This approach ensures your objectives are practical and achievable, and helps maintain steady progress toward your goal.

1. Take one step at a time

Have a goal that is so overwhelming you have no idea where even to start? We’re here for you.

Here’s the plan: break that big rock into more manageable, pebble-sized pieces. Dividing objectives into manageable steps is crucial—it makes the process more practical and helps you track progress more effectively. For example, if you’re launching your company’s open enrollment period for the upcoming year, you could break that project down like so:

• Determine what benefits have changed since last year

• Edit documents and update charts

• Announce changes at the company's all-hands meeting

• Schedule and plan open enrollment

• Update corporate website and onboarding materials

Or, if your goal is to lose weight, you can break it down into manageable steps such as setting a target weight, planning weekly meal preps, scheduling regular workouts, and tracking your progress.

Breaking a behemoth goal into mini goals makes large objectives more attainable and easier to track. Mini goals help you get started without feeling overwhelmed, and they maintain your motivation by providing incremental progress and small wins along the way. It all ties back to the Progress Principle, which states that small wins can really light a fire under you to keep moving forward.

2. Sort out your resources

What do you need to reach each milestone and start your victory dance parties? What supplies, how much time, and what skills will move you through each step toward the end goal? Aligning your resources and skills is essential for achieving your professional goals, especially when aiming for career advancement or leadership success.

If you want to be ready to announce the changes at your next company all-hands meeting, you know you need to be ready by the first Thursday of next month. That means you need to get moving — especially since you think it’s going to take your team at last a week just to nail down what’s changed and update all of the documentation.

Outline what you need right now, so you can start planning and lining up resources. That will keep you from running into any frustrating bottlenecks as you work toward your goal.

3. Set a timeline

You have your milestones and a solid grasp of what you need. But your approach is still a bit fuzzy, and you’re not clear on how to actually start doing the work. It’s time to put your milestones in a workflow.

Your final step in goal setting is placing those milestones in an order that makes sense. That can be based on factors like importance or the amount of time each requires, or there may already be a set sequence that your leadership has asked you to follow.

For your company’s open enrollment, you know that you can’t update the website and onboarding materials until you edit all of the relevant internal documents and charts. You can’t get that done until you figure out what’s changed from last year.

Once you move those pieces around, you’ve built a roadmap that you can follow to the end. Bust out your happy dance, and then get to work!

To stay on track, make sure you regularly track progress—journaling methods like bullet journaling can help you monitor your goals and visualize your progress. Using a visible scoreboard is also a powerful way to maintain accountability and keep your team focused on achieving each milestone.

Tips for overcoming obstacles

Even with a solid plan, obstacles will come up. The difference is how quickly you respond and get moving again.

• Plan for common roadblocks. Identify likely risks early and decide how you’ll handle them (adjust scope, shift timelines, add resources) so surprises don’t derail you.

• Lean on support. A coach, mentor, or teammate can help you troubleshoot, stay accountable, and keep your motivation up when things get tough.

Goals rarely happen in a straight line—but consistent, small steps (plus a plan for setbacks) keep you on track.

How to build accountability

Accountability is what turns goals into results. When progress is visible—and shared—people are far more likely to follow through.

• Share your goals. Tell a manager, mentor, or teammate what you’re working toward. Regular check-ins (weekly, monthly, or at key milestones) create natural moments to review progress and adjust as needed.

• Track what matters. Use a goal-setting document, dashboard, or project management tool to monitor milestones and metrics. Clear visibility keeps priorities top of mind and prevents tasks from slipping through the cracks.

• Build accountability into workflows. Integrate goals into your team’s existing tools and processes so progress tracking becomes part of the day-to-day—not an afterthought.

When accountability is consistent and structured, it’s much easier to stay focused, maintain momentum, and achieve the outcomes you set out to reach.

Make goal setting your not-so-secret weapon

Whether it’s running a marathon or overhauling an outdated team process, progress comes from clear goals and consistent follow-through, not just good intentions.

The goal-setting process provides defined steps you can follow to set a clear objective and motivate yourself to get moving. 

Follow the steps, and you'll be well on your way to moving your objectives from “to do” to “done.” We're rooting for you!