For the past several weeks I’ve walked through the five steps I think are key for setting goals.

• Step 1 – A Little Self-Reflection: Where are you right now and how did you get here?
• Step 2 – Define Your Motivation: What is your deep down motivation to make a change?
• Step 3 – Write Your Goal: Craft your goal using SMART criteria
• Step 4 – Action Planning: What practical steps to you need to take to be successful?
• Step 5 – Contingencies: What obstacles might get in your way of success and how can you prepare to overcome them?

But what if you have a huge goal in mind that doesn’t quite breakdown very well into these steps? Should you just abandon those Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) and only go after smaller changes? Absolutely not!

The last company I worked for had a great way of thinking about big goals vs smaller ones. Every year teams would go through the process of writing their multi-year objectives, or re-evaluating what was written the previous year. These multi-year goals were always written as stretch goals and as such, would take more than one calendar year to accomplish. Next these big goals would be broken down into yearly goals and then further broken into quarterly action plans. Did this take a lot of time? Sure did. But it was worth the effort. Everything was designed so that it all worked together within the overarching corporate strategy. Since you are just one person, the process may not need to be quite so complex. But I think the same principles can apply.

BHAGs can be written in a less-detailed and more broad overarching way. While I encourage goals to be detailed and specific, a BHAG might be something more like “Buy a house.” I think it still helps to be time-bound, but it can be more vague. “Buy a house in the next 3-5 years.”

Now, there are a lot of things that need to happen between now and buying a house. Maybe you need to pay off that credit card debt and build up your credit score, or you want to save more towards a substantial down payment. Or you need to figure out your long-term career goals so you know where you want to settle down. Each of these then can become a SMART goal with an action plan. Figure out what you need to do right now, walk through your goal-setting process, and then next year start again with self-reflection in the context of your BHAG. What were you able to accomplish? What obstacles got in the way? Was your goal the right size or was it too easy? Too difficult? Then make your next set of goals to keep you on track towards buying a house in 2-4 years!

Big goals can be scary and daunting. So instead of focusing on the big hairy thing at the end of the road, just focus on taking the next right step.