January is a perfect time for new beginnings, in both our personal and our professional lives. This is why New Year’s resolutions are so popular.
Now, resolutions can be a powerful, especially for a business. There is a key trait that every professional and every business has in common: something can be improved. No business, no matter how large or small, is perfect, and that means that no business should stop trying to grow and learn.
By creating a business-related New Year’s resolution, you energize your employees and yourself. You make starting the year with your business exciting.
However, the unpleasant truth is this: 80% of New Years Resolutions fail by February. And if you have made a resolution to better yourself professionally, you might find that your enthusiasm for your chosen task is already starting to wane.
How do you give yourself the best chance to succeed at your business New Year’s resolution?
The first step is knowing why you made the resolution in the first place. For example, if you set a goal to post more to your professional social media, have you taken the time to ask yourself why? If the answer is, “because someone told me to do it,” you will probably find yourself struggling with finding the motivation to do it.
Instead, decide what you are hoping to gain from your resolution. In the example above, some answers might be “I want to reach a wider audience” or “I want to make my brand more accessible.” If you keep these ultimate goals in mind, it will make continuing to work on your resolution after the initial excitement has worn off far more rewarding.
Once you have decided on an ultimate goal, write it down, along with your resolution. Put it somewhere where you will look at it regularly. This will hold you accountable, as well as motivate you.
Finally, set a basic timetable for achieving your goal. Break up larger resolutions into smaller, more manageable chunks, and set a date for each task to be completed. By doing this, you ensure that you will not put things off until later in the year, where even if you do try to start, you run the risk of discovering too late how much time your task will take, becoming overwhelmed, and giving up.
However, even if you follow all of this advice, you may still find yourself faltering when it comes to actually sitting down and working on your resolution. If this is the case, set aside an hour or two, either daily or weekly, to work on your resolution. (And, again, you should write down what time you plan on working on it.) This will create a routine, and after a few weeks you’ll find that working on your resolution will feel natural, as opposed to challenging.
It takes determination and resolve to move forward on resolutions. But it is this very resolve that often sets successful professionals apart from the rest.
If you have not set a business New Year’s resolution yet, here are just some ways you can strive to improve your professional life in 2018:
- Create a more cohesive, engaging brand voice.
- Strengthen your social media presence, and stay on top of trends.
- Promote your business with a solid marketing plan.
- Figure out how to make your business more accessible.
- Learn something new.
- Improve your work/life balance.
- Find a more organized way of handling that one task that always catches you by surprise.
- Become a mentor (or find a mentor).
- Begin a business blog.
- Improve communication in your business.