Everyone knows that most New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken. Who hasn’t said that their resolution in the upcoming year is to lose weight and make more money? Research shows that around 45% of all Americans make New Year’s resolutions, but only 8% achieve them in the new year. This is usually do to the fact that the resolution is usually unrealistic, relying on willpower and not long-lasting change according to Forbes. Instead of thinking of your overall well-being or health, pinpoint a mindset you would like to have and specific behaviors that you control and therefore you can change. Since, as Americans, we spend most of our time at work, create work-related resolutions for the upcoming year instead of the same old promises to yourself.
New Year Resolutions for Work
Work resolutions can be related to personal goals for the year or personal goals for the day-to-day. Even the smallest of changes have the potential to “rock your world” if you let it. Start by incorporating some small, easy to do resolutions into the workday and grow from there.
Positive Attitude at Work
In a previous blog How to Find Passion in Your Work, we focused on the importance of attitude. Not everything to do with going to work each day must be negative and dreaded. In fact, if a positive attitude is not adapted toward work, any New Year’s resolution you try to tackle there will be doomed to failure. Find what you do like (i.e. making money to pay your bills, opportunity for travel, camaraderie of your co-workers) and focus on those aspects in the coming year.
Next assess things you find tedious, counter-productive, frustrating or just plain annoying. Now, get real and assess whether you have control of these things and/or situations. If you don’t have control, it is not a realistic New Year’s resolution! Set yourself up to succeed by only working on resolutions you have control over. Once there is a viable list of resolutions, start adopting your work resolutions into the workday.
Day-to-Day Goals at Work
Sometimes it’s the little things that can get you through the workday, so focus on making the day go smoother in the coming year. It can be as simple as keeping your desk and/or work areas tidy, or setting a goal to find three positive take-aways after each meeting you attend. It is important to stay away from generalized work resolutions, like “get promoted” and “increase my salary”. Although those are great goals, chances are you don’t have 100% control of whether you succeed. Think simple, specific and within your direct control. Try three to five of the following work resolutions for the month of January:
- Bring your lunch to work and eat with co-workers you don’t usually sit with
- Return emails and/or calls within the same workday, even if it is only to acknowledge you received the inquiry and will get back to them when you have more information
- Complement co-workers on ideas or shared inputs
- Be on-time to work, appointments and meetings
- Try to learn something new each week (i.e. a new tool/application at work, a personal fact about a customer)
Positive action brings on positive results, so get real and set New Year’s work resolutions that you can achieve this coming year. Changing your perception about what a New Year resolution is will set yourself up for success in 2017 in place of failure. Who knows, as a bonus, these new habits may carry over to your personal life, making time away from work much better as well!
Call Fun Team Building
As part of your New Year Resolutions, schedule your team building day with Fun Team Building and get the year started off right! Give Larry Lipman a call at 770-333-3303 or visit fill out the contact us form to set the date for your event today!