Taking care of business: business resolutions for the new year
Sunday, January 14th, 2007
Reducing stress at work, embarking on a new career, and improving skills are some pretty common new year’s resolutions. CollegeJournal has a list of career-enhancing resolutions that should help you get on track for success in 2007!
The article contains a lot of great suggestions for improving your professional life. I was a particular fan of the way the article opened up:
Careers are easy to neglect. If the paychecks keep coming and the boss is tolerable, most people get into a routine and direct their attention elsewhere.
I think this paragraph can be adjusted to say that life is easy to neglect. As long as you’re paying your bills, keeping fairly busy, and seeing friends on a semi-regular basis, it’s a snap to get into a routine that isn’t necessarily negative in any way, but is definitely not focused on helping you achieve anything new or significant.
I first had this realization soon after I graduated from college. I was a good student and had, over 16+ years of schooling, grown accustomed to the sense of accomplishment and direction that comes from progressing from one grade to another on a yearly basis and consistently working toward achieving clear goals, like completing all the work on the syllabus (defined for me by the teacher or professor) taking the right classes to graduate (defined for me by school administrators).
It was quite a shock to drift through the next two years. During this time, I began to understand that I would no longer have the satisfaction of automatically reaching a new milestone (9th grade to 10th grade, college sophomore to college junior) each year. Instead, I would have to invent my own goals and milestones. Since I had never taken a class in How To Plan The Rest Of Your Life, I was kind of stumped as to what I should do. I felt like I needed more guidance, but wasn’t getting it from the bland entry-level types of jobs I had at the time.
Eventually, I became more accustomed to defining my own successes–something that’s really hard to do after years of getting graded on a weekly if not daily basis. I adjusted to being on a “real world” schedule (as opposed to a school-year schedule) and getting “performance reviews” only once a year. I also started to think about making goals for myself.
I guess I’m getting a little off track here, but I think my main point is that career-related resolutions are good to make, and can really help you improve your life–not just your professional life, but your entire well-being. Out of the career resolutions suggested in the article, I think that “trying something new” and “getting involved” are the two most important resolutions to make. They’re also the resolutions that will have the greatest impact on your personal life. If you learn a new skill and make new business (and social) contact, you’ll feel more fulfilled both as a professional and as a person.
Anybody have a business-related New Year’s resolution?
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