Top five New Year's resolutions to boost your career

A New Year's resolution offers a starting point to re-do and refresh. Except it doesn't actually work out for most people. Only 8 percent of people get to realize their goals. The rest give up, forget or fail miserably. Pretty sure you didn't want to hear such grim statistics just before the start of 2015. There’s a way out.
 

Toon: Ehsanur Raza Ronny

Delegate smartly
Entrepreneurs want to do everything themselves. Office managers want to oversee everything. It provides optimal control. But that's a myth. It is hard work, and people take pride in hard work. But it's not necessarily smart work, which is much more important.
The smartest people I know don't do everything to maintain an illusion of control. They delegate so they can spend time on things that are indispensable to the work flow. Case in point: I run three different publications on three different topics. One is an automotive magazine. When I started, I had no photographer. I contacted people and shot the cars myself, while also doing the test drives for the stories. While I love photography and was good at it, it was cutting in on other work. Now I have smart people managing the shots for me as well as photographers. This gives me time to plan the shoot and convince car people to give me cars.

Learn something new
Pick up a skill that translates into either growth for your career or just mental wellbeing. I had an old car that was in great shape but the paint had chips and was a horrible colour resembling shape-shifting alien poop. The shops that did great work charged a lot. So I decided to paint the car myself. This is the age of Google. I found everything online. It took me two months balancing business, work and family. It cost me 16 percent of the professionals' estimate and the output is just as good.
As an automotive magazine editor, this serves as a great project story. Personally, I love looking at the shiny reflections of my super straight panels. Also, now I can fall back on being a car painter if the publication sector tanks.
Doing something different opens up a new dimension to your skill-set. Learn how to speak a language, take up portrait photography, or try the basics of web design. And how do you find time for that? Delegate.

Also check out: Top two reasons why New Year's resolutions fail and how to avoid them.

Join a networking group
A group is great for sparking new ideas. It's also great for wasting time. Pick carefully and be part of a network that focuses on your specific career objectives. Or it could just focus on your interests. Facebook is a great platform for getting like-minded individuals together. There are groups that share information and tips on shared interests. WeDrawStuff gets together just to draw and share artwork. They focus mostly on comics.  It's a great source of talent for any firm looking for concept artists. Joining such groups help network outside your immediate reach.
And if nothing, then start your own group. Burger Lovers of Chittagong?

Let go of things that don't work
Quite simply put, every year, we should focus on letting things go that don't work out anymore. It could be that treadmill you've been hoarding beside the bedroom wardrobe because you don't like to run. Or it could be that employee/subordinate that refuses to be on time/get things done/browses too much porn at work (a permissible time may or may not have been set).
If you're in business, you might have products or marketing plans that don't necessarily give great results. It's time to cut back on losses of wasted time. There's always something better. Letting go of some things will be instantaneous, others take a longer time. But every year, there should be a plan to purge.

Evaluate personal contributions
List the top three strengths and three obstacles related to your past performance. This helps you chalk out a much more focused and effective plan. And once you've pinpointed these, carry out a review of where you are and what needs to be done every week. It's like a periodic doctor's check-up. You'll find out what's working and what's not, except this is less painful. This way you get to avoid getting stuck in the same place, doign the same unproductive activities every day.

And that should be it. These apply not just as a starter point but also as a continuous process of self improvement. A good thing about New Year's resolutions is that it comes arpound every 365 days. Don't wait for that to happen. Consider this to be the year to make things happen.

You might also like: New Year's survival guide for office folk.