A New Year’s Resolution for Work

While it may not be as exciting as losing weight, this New Year’s Resolution for work could transform your professional life. It’s about doing an inventory of your daily or weekly activities and deciding if they need to be changed.

Have you ever looked around your home and realized you have a lot of unread magazines? This is a sign that either the magazines don’t capture your interest, as much as in the past, or you’ve filled that reading time with other activities.

While you’ve made a habit of buying the magazines, is it time to stop? This same kind of analysis can be made with your work life.

Over a couple of weeks, write down the things you do repeatedly. Later, review your list and evaluate it with the following factors:

Are You the Best Person?

Often, we inherit activities at work or keep doing them because they’re either comfortable or we’re the only person who knows how to do them. You need to consider if the time spent on the activity is a smart investment.

If you don’t have a competitive advantage over everyone else and others can be easily trained, then it may be time to pass on the activity. Over time these minor but time consuming tasks add up like compound interest. This is especially important if the time spent on the little stuff is adding up and keeping you from pursing more important work.

Can It Be Done Faster?

If you have to do certain things at work that take time, can you find a way to do them faster? This can be especially useful with meetings.

You may have several reoccurring meetings that have been the same length for years. Now is the time to ask whether they could be accomplished in less time.

Can you take an hour long meeting and challenge everyone to complete it in 10 or 15 fewer minutes? It’s an efficiency adjustment but one that could give everyone more time in their day.

Seems too hard to change? Imagine if someone offered your team a million dollars if they could run a good meeting in less time. I’m guessing people would figure it out. A resistance to change does not mean impossibility.

Consider Changing Technology

Technology can play a big role in a New Year’s Resolution for work. Things are always changing and often in such a way that systems become faster and cheaper. Surprisingly, a better rate or offering is available but you don’t know about it unless you ask. You don’t want to stay grandfathered into a plan that’s no longer competitive.

While it does take time to investigate, it pays to stay informed. Sometimes it can be as simple as having an intern or lower level staff member call current providers or shop the marketplace. Since they’re not responsible for the buying decision, it takes some of pressure out of the process.

I’ve heard some larger companies have a designated person whose job it is to contact all service providers and ask, “Can you do better?”