The year 2021 is coming to a close and it’s the time of year when employees are pondering on what should be their New Year’s resolutions for 2022 especially when it comes to their professional lives. When making your goals for next year, think of ideas that would make you a better employee, co-worker and subordinate to your superiors. Here are five New Year’s resolution ideas for your workplace and some tips on how to keep your resolutions.
1. Keep Your Workspace Clean and Organized
Whether you work at home or in the office, promise yourself to keep your workspace clutter-free. It’s a refreshing, clean way to start the New Year. A clean, organized workspace helps you to stay focused on your daily tasks. Put only essential things on your table such as pen and notebook or post-it notes, and coffee mug. For the hard copies of your documents, notes and other paperwork that are still on your desk, put them in an accessible file cabinet and organize them into identifiable folders if ever you’ll still need them for reference purposes.
2. Become a Positive Worker
Make an effort to be an inspirational and motivational employee for yourself and your colleagues. If you’re staying put in your current job because you believe it provides you with personal and professional fulfillment, then be grateful that you have a job you like. Get to know your co-workers by chatting with them during lunchtime and talking about things you have in common. If you have time, try to help a team member who needs help with their work tasks.
Practicing positivity and empathy in the workplace can promote better cooperation and cohesiveness among you and your team members.
3. Commit to Stay Healthier at Work
If you feel like your work is stressful and always making you feel tired, make it a goal to have a healthy work-life balance whether working from home or at the office. Some of the good suggestions for your goal of a healthier work environment:
- Sleep at least 8 hours a day so you’ll feel more invigorated and refreshed when you go to work the next day.
- Decrease the stress in your work. Practice yoga or other relaxing exercises, do hobbies that you enjoy and engage in other stress-relieving activities. Also, try not to get confrontational with your co-workers and don’t keep any grudges with them.
- Use an ergonomically design chair and desk that makes it easy for you to sit with a good back posture especially if you sit for hours on end.
- Take several short breaks to do some stretching exercises with your arms and legs.
- Make an effort to eat healthy lunch meals that have more servings of fruits, vegetables and fruit juices.
4. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
A strategy of stepping out of your comfort zone should be part of your career advancement goal for the next year. Instead of being content in always playing the safe side, start taking small risks in your workplace such as striving to be a leader rather than just being a follower.
For example, if your team manager is looking for volunteers to lead a project, take this opportunity if you believe you’re qualified to handle it. During your regular team meetings, take the initiative to suggest improvements in the work processes of projects. If there is an in-house job promotion that you believe you’re qualified for, try to apply for it. Constantly challenging yourself will help build your self-confidence and self-esteem which can contribute in developing your leadership skills.
5. Improve Your Knowledge and Skills
Setting self-improvement as a continuing learning process is a good goal that you should regularly practice in your professional life. Use your spare time to take online courses that can enhance or add to your current skills. Acquiring enhanced knowledge can boost your professional qualifications which increases your chances of getting noticed by your superior for future promotions. Updating your online resume with your enhanced knowledge and skills could even get you noticed by external recruiters which can lead to the career advancement that you’ve been dreaming about.
Three Effective Tips on How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions
It’s easy to come up with a list of resolutions for the coming year, but actually accomplishing them may be difficult. Here are three good tips on how you can keep your promises for the New Year:
- Plan ahead and make a detailed plan – Don’t wait until Dec. 31 to make a list of your New Year’s resolutions. Create a specific set of goals you want to accomplish and put them in a detailed written plan, which helps to keep track of your progress. For each goal in the list, include the steps you will take to accomplish that objective and the strategies you will do to keep yourself on track. By January 1, put your detailed list on your table as a constant reminder of the goals you want to fulfill.
An alternative to putting a list on your table is posting virtual sticky notes on your desktop. You put the whole list on one sticky note or each goal will have its own sticky note. Free apps such as Windows Sticky Notes, Stickies and 7 Sticky Notes provide a clean, minimalist design for the detailed list of your resolutions.
- Choose specific objectives – Instead of coming up with ambiguous goals like “being more productive” or “no more procrastinating”, focus on specific targets. An example is “submitting all my projects on time so I’ll be more productive” or “putting away my cellphone and other distractions while I’m working so they won’t tempt me to procrastinate in doing my daily tasks”. Setting realistic, achievable goals allows you to exactly plan on how you will stick to your resolutions for the entire year.
- Keep track of your progress – Aside from your detailed plan, create a separate journal about the status of your goals. Write down the reasons why you are working towards your resolutions. As you go along in fulfilling your promises, identify the methods that worked in achieving a goal and the strategies that didn’t work. Use the journal as a reference to identify the specific reason that is causing you to falter on a goal and how you can overcome the stumbling block.
We at LegalMatch Philippines have noticed the positive benefits to our employees who have practiced effective New Year’s resolutions in their work habits. If they positively worked for them, there’s no reason they won’t benefit you too. We encourage you to give these resolutions a try and see for yourself the positive changes in your career. We wish you Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year ahead of you!