How Do You Balance Short Term Versus Long Term Career Goals?

I struggle with this question every day. Ultimately learning sets you up to do more in the short-term so I think its a good investment, but at some point you have to do what's necessary and focus on practical goals.

In my view, if your Long Term Career Goals consist of Short Terms it's really easy. Closing short terms, you go to long goals

The answer is somewhat straightforwad in my case: make the small goals serve the big goal. My big bucket-list goal was to see if I could make Microsoft MVP. 5 years ago my career goal was to teach or become a CTO.

In both of these cases, I served the big goals with little goals: write a few articles on a topic. Give a talk. Apply to a conference. Pass a certification. Complete a course. Watch at least X learning videos every Y interval. The small goals serve as short milestones to help build skills and validate that you actually want the thing you're aiming for.

Not all of your short-term goals need to serve long-term goals though. I've really enjoyed many of the smaller goals of the more interesting varieties. They didn't really prepare me for anything else, but they were part of the journey and were a fun and interesting distraction. Sometimes you just want to learn something or explore an idea, and that's okay too.

TBH I don't think I've ever had any career goals in almost 28 years as a professional developer