If you’re anything like I am, you have mixed feelings about New Year’s resolutions.
It seems like a natural time to make important changes. It’s like a universal pressing of the “reset” button. Maybe that’s why 45% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions in the first place. But here’s the thing — only 8% of us are successful in achieving them.
We suspect it has something to do with the nature of the resolutions themselves. According to a study by the University of Scranton’s Journal of Clinical Psychology, the top 10 resolutions of 2015 included things like losing weight and falling in love. And sure, those goals are great — we’re all about being happy and healthy — but will they make you better at what you do every day?
Next year, we challenge you to come up with and stick to professional New Year’s resolutions — things that will make you more creative, productive, and generally more content at work. Short on ideas? Here are 12 of ours to help you get started, along with resources to help you actually accomplish them.
12 New Year’s Resolutions for Professionals
1) Designate an electronics-free zone.
Why?
Our bodies are smarter than you might think. They’re trained to respond to light and dark, which according to the National Sleep Foundation send us important signals, like the time of day. Those signals also aid our bodies in adjusting our circadian rhythms — that’s the handy 24-hour physiological cycle that helps us fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning.
All of that is pretty cool … until screens are added to the equation. Our brains recognize the brightness from phones, computer monitors, and even TVs as external light, which sends the signal that we should be awake. That’s why it’s harder for so many of us to fall asleep when we’re exposed to too much screen time at night. The verdict? Put the devices down before bed.
How?
At INBOUND 2013, Arianna Huffington — who later went on to pen The Sleep Revolution — gave some great advice regarding the sleep/screen conundrum: Ban electronics from your bedroom for good.
“I never take devices to bed,” she said. “iPads, iPhones, Blackberries — I don’t charge them near my bed, because I feel it’s imperative to be able to have uninterrupted renewal time.”
This habit is a tough one to break, and it’s one that I’ve personally been working on for years. So if you like to watch movies or shows on your computer before bed, for example, I can relate — these are the mindless things that help us unwind at the end of the day. Luckily, there are solutions to help you resolve the problem for good, some of which might still allow you to indulge in your evening TV viewing.
Helpful Resources
We’d encourage you to ditch the electronics completely before bed. Instead, try reading, journaling, or maybe even a few minutes of yoga. And if you absolutely cannot part with your electronics:
- Try downloading a desktop app that reduces your screen’s blue light as the day progresses — that’s the kind emitted from most electronics and is often cited as the culprit for sleep loss. We recommend f.lux, which adjusts your screen’s blue light depending on the time of day, or the similar filter from PC Sun Screen.
- Plus, the latest iPhone OS now comes with a “night shift” mode, which accomplishes the same thing after sunset.
2) Write something every day.
Why?
Sadly, the decreasing quality of writing in the U.S. has been making headlines for a while now. And people want to become better writers — they just have trouble investing the necessary time.
But it’s an important skill. And if you’re going to be blogging regularly — which we recommend you do — the writing needs to be good.
If you want to become a better writer, then you need to write a lot. The way to improve that skill is the same way you’d approach any other — with practice.
It’s the same advice we give to people who want to blog more consistently (another worthy New Year’s resolution) which is to treat it like working out. You’ve got to do it consistently to see great results. After all, you can’t just publish a blog once every few months and expect to rack up views, leads, and customers. The same goes for your overall writing skills.
How?
To start, get into the habit of writing on a daily basis. Neil Patel suggests writing for at least 30 minutes every workday, skipping the weekends. Remember the advice we just gave to journal before bed, instead of looking at a screen? Here’s a great way to put that time to use.
And even if you don’t identify as a writer, pick a question — something from a customer, a friend, or a topic that’s always piqued your curiosity — and write something about it. Or, just write nonsense. It’s the habit of writing regularly that’s important, especially in the beginning.
Helpful Resources
When we encourage people to write more, one of the most common objections is, “I have nothing to say.” We profoundly disagree, and thought that these tools might help to generate some ideas:
- Daily Page: Emails you a writing prompt every morning, and you have the rest of the day to write your response. Once you’ve written your response to the prompt, you can either share it or keep it private.
- 750 Words: Encourages you to write 750 words per day about anything you want. It gamifies writing by giving you points for writing at all, for writing 750 words or more, and for writing on a consistent basis.
- Twords: Calls itself “the app that nudges you to write.” It notifies you when you haven’t written in a while so you can keep yourself accountable — and even gives you the option to connect with others who will help you stay on track.
Need more help? Check out these posts:
3) Keep up with Google.
Why?
Google likes to make changes to its algorithm as much as certain pop singers like to change boyfriends. But all of them are made to improve user experience, which is a good thing — it helps searchers discover the best content for what they’re seeking.
This year, we challenge you to really keep up with those changes. That doesn’t just mean staying on top of news about the latest changes. It also means keeping your content at the highest quality to make Google’s algorithm happy, which means more people will be able to find you. Win-win.
Consider reorganizing your content library into content clusters since SEO is evolving to favor topics over keywords according to Matthew Barby, global head of growth and SEO at HubSpot. That will help you harness more search traffic, because you’ll have a larger pool of relevant keywords and phrases to be discovered.
In general, it’s a good idea to regularly revisit and refresh your content strategy, too. Not only does it prevent your content from getting stale, but it also helps you to keep up with what people are searching for, which in turn will help you keep pace with Google.
Helpful Resources
4) Improve your design skills.
In case you haven’t heard, visual content is a pretty big deal in marketing. For one thing, it’s 40x more likely to be shared on social media. Plus, when a relevant image is paired with information, people retain 55% more of that information after three days.
But quality visual content goes beyond a Google image search or stock photography. At the same time, however, not everyone has an ample design budget. For that reason, we believe that 2017 is the year for you to master some design skills. That will allow you to create the content yourself — or, if you do have a bigger budget, learn to better communicate with contractors and agencies that create it for you.
These days, learning a new skill has become its own industry. Never before have there been so many online resources — many of which are either free or relatively inexpensive — to self-educate. And many of them are available outside of the classroom, like on YouTube how-to videos, Coursera, or Khan Academy.
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