Marketing Communication Ink
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83 New Year’s Resolutions to Enrich Your Life and Career
Did you make any New Year’s resolutions, this year? Generally, I don’t – as I see little reason to wait for a new year.
A new calendar month is just as good as a new year, after all. For that matter, any day is a good starting point for making a change for the better. Why wait for January 1 to roll around?
Having said that, traditionally, the New Year is when many people stop to take stock of their current situation and resolve to make changes – whether in their careers or personal lives. A quick search of the online world will yield dozens of thought-provoking articles, chock-a-block with New Year’s resolutions for 2013. Here are just 5 of those articles with 83 ideas so good, they’re worth sharing.
Resolution Idea 1 — Donating Back to Community
One of the more interesting New Year’s resolutions came from an artist, Sarah Tule, who had the idea of donating one piece of her artwork to an auction, each month, with all proceeds of the sale going back to a local food bank.
Now there’s an interesting way to make good use of her time and talents. She can do the painting any time during the month – no need to commit to actually showing up somewhere on a specified day or time. Easy. And, every penny goes to help her local community. I really like this idea. You can read more about the Manna Food Project auction, bid on her work, as well as see more of her lovely works of art at www.sarahtuleart.blogspot.com.
Resolution Idea 2 — Changing Up the Job Search Plan
I recently met Andy O’Hearn who, much like me, is a marketing communications professional, seasoned writer, editor, blogger and job seeker. He contributes to our networking group’s newsletter, and posted an ideas-packed article, which he dubs, “My Mistletoe List”, containing Job-Search Resolutions for 2013.
Many of his resolutions are exceedingly simple to do — such as #5, “I will create (and carry with me at all times) professional-quality business cards. Reason: It’s unprofessional to be constantly scribbling down my information on whatever scraps of paper happen to be handy . . . and I’m also missing out on potential personal-branding opportunities.”
Or #9, “I will test new/niche job boards and company careers webpages, as well as ‘career insider’ sites such as Glassdoor. Reason: The odds for finding a position here may be better than the typical job-aggregator websites.”
Not hard, right? Perhaps the idea of making the goals simple improves the odds of actually achieving them. And, with so many goals — 30 to be exact — even if you don’t accomplish them all, the chances are good that you’ll achieve at least a few — and maybe that’ll be all it takes to land a great job this coming year. Let’s all hope.
For the remainder of Andy’s personal job search resolutions see his Tips: 30 Job Search Resolutions article.
Resolution Idea #3 — Have a Job? 50 Resolutions for Career Growth
ManagingAmericans.com is an interesting new website I just found, intended to help business people succeed, regardless of what level they’re at in their professional career. With articles spanning communication skills to delegation, meetings management to mentoring, there’s something for everyone.
They’ve put together an idea-rich list of 50 resolutions for 2013 to make a positive impact on your career. Perhaps you’ll find at least two or three to help you move your career forward.
Resolution Idea #4 — Join a Meetup Group for Fun or Profit
I received an email with a subject line that simply read: “Unresolutions”, and which said, “Resolutions are meant to be broken. Try these instead.” The email, from Meetup.com, then went on to very cleverly suggest:
- Cancel your gym membership. Check out outdoor meetups. (4,874 groups)
- Quit Your Job. Check out startup meetups. (4,081 groups)
- Read less. Check out movie meetups. (6,738 groups)
- Lose sleep. Check out late night meetups. (426 groups)
- Run away from home. Check out new in town meetups. (11,879 groups)
And the list went on. Whether you’re a beer drinker, foodie, pet lover, biker, techno geek, blogger, new entrepreneur… whatever your interest… there’s a personal or professional group for you. And, if you don’t find a local group offering what you’re looking for, you can easily start your own using their site.
As Meetup.com puts it, “Just do what you love with people who love to do the same thing.” Seems like a natural, as far as New Year’s resolutions go, as there isn’t a membership fee, so you can try out a variety of different groups and find the one(s) you like best. Whether for fun or professional development, it’s a great way to meet new people and share your interests and ideas.
Resolution Idea # 5 — Create Work-Life Balance.
Tim Tyrell-Smith, publisher of Tim’s Strategy career and life blog, has just started publishing guest postings. His first is from Dawn Rasmussen, who had an interesting perspective on work-life balance that resonated with me.
Her New Year’s resolution includes the thought that, “The true work-life balance is finding that magic “sweet spot” where you still push yourself to continuously learn and improve, while at the same time taking that mental break to assess exactly how far you’ve come, and take care of yourself because work isn’t the only thing we live for.” Read her January 2nd 2013 article titled, “What the View Looks Like from the Top of the Mountain” for more on achieving that seesaw balance of career and life.
Resolutions Wrap Up
So whether it’s finding a way to use your talents to give back to the community, position your skills to land a new job, expand on your skills to succeed in your current career, extend your universe of contacts to find new friends or professional groups, or look within to improve your work-life balance, there are endless simple changes we can make to enrich our lives in the year ahead. Which ones will you make?
Suzy Kedzierski is a B2B marketing communications specialist, freelance writer and consultant, with no affiliation to any of the people or organizations mentioned, except as follows. I follow all of the blogs listed here, and am a member of the Professional Services Group of Central NJ, whose newsletter Andy O’Hearn’s article appears in. I first discovered Sarah Tule’s charming artwork when she donated another watercolor to a Hurricane Sandy fundraiser. I subsequently bid on and won that painting – see my blog article http://wp.me/p2EWMT-wB, and am so enamored of her work, we are contemplating producing a children’s book together later this year.
Photo credit: New Years’s Eve Fireworks (Photo credit: c r i s). Courtesy of flickr.com
5 comments on “83 New Year’s Resolutions to Enrich Your Life and Career”
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For another great article on Work-Life Balance, see this Fathers Work and Family blog posting: http://fathersworkandfamily.com/2013/01/07/what-is-work-family-balance-anyway/
And thanks to you for the great idea of giving back to the community. While others may not be artists, your idea easily translates in so many other ways, depending on skill set. For example, in our area, there are endless “tricky tray” fundraisers — a CPA could offer a free tax filing, an HR person could offer a resume rewrite, and so on. Wishing you much success with this venture.
This was a very interesting read! Thanks for including me!
~Sarah
Squid Daddy – Wonderful to hear from you. Happy New Year. Hope you and family had a nice holiday and New Year’s celebration. Thanks so much for your note – I really appreciate it and hope that perhaps one or two of these ideas will spark an exciting opportunity for you in 2013. Do keep me posted. Looking forward to chatting more off line..
Hi Cheds
I always look forward to your blogs and I’m never disappointed. Thanks
Squids