Resolutions are helpful, but be honest about implementation

Melony Smith is not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. “I just don’t think people are realistic when they sit down and write a list of the five or 10 things they want to accomplish in the year ahead,” says Smith, a careet coach. “That’s usually because people don’t write resolutions, they write goals. And those are two different things.”

Smith believes that that’s why many people decide against running New Year’s resolutions in the first place. “They treat their resolutions as if they are tangible goals,” she says. “But a good list of resolutions shouldn’t be a list of where you want to be but instead it should be a list of how you want to get there.”

For example, Smith says you shouldn’t list a resolution to become a manager by the end of the year. Instead, you should list the behaviors and strategies that you can put into place in 2017 to put yourself in a position to become a manager. “A resolution list is based on what you resolve to do as an individual, not the rewards you’ll receive if you begin to embody those behaviors.”

Practical matters

Dakota Green, from Los Angeles, dropped out of a LinkedIn group recently because her online peers were creating a common list of resolutions that she considered to be a bit misguided. “Everything was about getting a bonus or a huge increase in salary and I thought to myself ‘how is this helpful when it’s so obvious?’ Of course we all want more money. I was hoping for something more practical, maybe goals I could set for myself that would help me stay motivated or help me find new ways to be creative,” Green says.

So Green decided to make her own set of resolutions. “I’m not generally a resolution type of person but I am a list person. I make lists for myself each night for the day ahead and I’m actually pretty good about sticking to those lists so I figured that a New Year’s resolution list might actually work for me,” she says.

One day, Green says she went out with her manager and two co-workers for an impromptu lunch and they discussed the things they wanted to accomplish in the year ahead. “It wasn’t really a formal business lunch,” she says. “We all go out to eat together at least once a week but for some reason, this time we really talked about work, which usually doesn’t happen.”

Green and her co-workers decided to have lunch the next day to continue their talk.

“We took things a step further by offering each other some advice. Talking about what our goals were and then taking some time to actually list some of the things we needed to do to get to those goals was kind of an eye-opener,” Green says. “You always set these expectations for yourself but you don’t necessarily fill in the blanks about how to get there.”

Input wanted

Smith says most people make resolutions based on their perceptions, so it’s helpful to learn if those perceptions are grounded in reality. “You may think that your work needs to be more creative but your co-workers may think that your creativity is already strong,” she says. “Maybe they’d like it if you were a bit more organized. You need to take their perceptions and balance them with your own.”

Green says the conversations with her co-workers practically mirrored Smith’s advice. “I would mention things I thought needed work and then everyone tells me that they considered those things to be my strengths,” she says. “I mentioned how I needed to come up with more ideas but everyone said my ideas were great. It’s just that I rarely provided a blueprint on how those ideas could be put into practice.”

That was an immediate game-changed. “They were right. Give me a legal pad or a blank screen on a computer and I can come up with at least 25 strong ideas,” says Green. “Can I provide two examples on how those ideas might work? Maybe, if you really push me, but I certainly wouldn’t do it for 25. So that conversation turned into a resolution: Try to make sure each idea had a concrete example of how it could be executed.”

Outside the office

Not all resolutions are based on behavior in the workplace. Some may have their roots in behavior at home. “I found myself incredibly groggy this past year and realized that I had become sort of addicted to binge-watching a lot of TV,” says James Laskowki, from Chicago. “I would read about something on Netflix or Amazon and I would stay up till two or three in the morning until I watched every episode. Problem was that I still had to get up for work every day at six to get my kids ready and off to school. So when you’re cutting down your sleep by three or four hours at night, it’s going to impact your job. One of my resolutions is to get more sleep because it became pretty obvious that my own performance at work was suffering because of what I was doing at home.”