It is 2025 and with the whole year in front of you why not establish some ground rules to help you achieve your professional goals?
A new year is upon us and as we begin to chart the waters of 2025, many will be setting personal and professional new year resolutions. While they are an ideal way to measure your success and keep you motivated, career resolutions, like all strategies that require dedication, can be difficult to keep, often leading to disappointment and abandonment at the first hurdle.
So, if you want to make a plan for the year ahead, but aren’t sure how to stick to your new year resolutions, then read on for some helpful tips and tricks.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint
Sticking to our new year resolutions isn’t always easy, especially when so much pressure is applied early on and any kind of faltering can be demotivating. If you are serious about wanting to make permanent professional changes it is important to remember that every day is an opportunity to advance and with a full year ahead of yourself, the move towards your goals needs to be gradual and sustainable.
If you find that you are consistently falling behind, rather than giving up, why not reconsider your objectives and look into simplifying the work so you can meet your targets and increase the complexity as you improve naturally over time.
Frequently we think that the best way to show we are advancing is to take on as many responsibilities as possible, but more often than not we do ourselves a disservice by becoming over-extended and burned out. By setting smaller goals and working towards the larger milestones you can develop a healthy, more mindful professional strategy.
Seeing is believing
It is far too easy to lose track of our success and failures when it remains an internal thought process. By mapping out a visual representation of your plans you can clearly see the trajectory, change what is not working and improve what is. Digital or physical journaling, vision boards and even gamified versions of work processes can be of great help, particularly if your professional resolution involves learning a new skill.
Additionally, logging your progress is a great way of showcasing the value of your hard work, increasing confidence and providing further motivation.
Build a community
Some new year resolutions are a personal endeavour, for example if you want to learn a foreign language, quit smoking, or acquire new skills, it really does come down to you and your willingness to commit. However, that is not to say that you could not benefit from the support and guidance of your peers and co-workers.
Establishing partnerships to help you achieve your goals can be highly motivating and even make something difficult or time consuming less so. By taking a task and turning it into an opportunity to socialise and establish a network, professionals may find that they are more likely to stick to their resolutions and have fun doing so.
It also means that there is someone else to hold you accountable and to motivate you as you strive for change. Just remember to help them out too.
Don’t be dull
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, which is just a way of saying that if your goals are too complex or numerous then you run the risk of becoming bored or overwhelmed. While your objectives should be challenging and of value to you, they also need to have a sense of balance and should include looking out for your mental, physical and emotional wellbeing.
For example, if you want to travel more for your work or build a network within a foreign branch of the organisation, you could schedule in a weekly coffee or lunch with a co-worker who speaks a different language, thereby giving you the chance to work on your skills and socialise.
Consistency is not the only key
Now most people would say that whatever you do, make sure you are consistent, which is good advice for most topics, but when it comes to sticking to your new year resolutions, I would say just do your best. The working environment is a busy space that demands flexibility and you won’t always have the same level of time or energy to put towards your goals, sometimes it will be less and other times far more.
Instead, make sure that you make good use of your time, that you understand where you may be going wrong, how to get back on track and that, regardless of what you did yesterday, that you are going to try again tomorrow.
That is probably the most important note to take away from this article, just be kind to yourself and welcome the new day, rather than getting flustered about the next 365 of them.
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