Are You 2013 Ready? — Leverage Your New Year’s Resolution for Better Productivity and Business Success!

The New Year is here and already some are having doubts about their ability to stick to their resolutions. The problem with most resolutions is that they start out good and strong, but eventually wane and fade within a few weeks.

Yet, despite all that, a few individuals will actually succeed in changing their habits and improving their lifestyle—permanently!

What is their secret? They take baby steps and avoid sudden or drastic changes. The most common reaso
New Year’s Resolutions fail is that people try to do too much too soon. When we try to change too many things at once, we tend to lose focus and energy.

Avoid making vague resolutions like “I’m going to improve my business!” While your intentions are good, you need to be more specific about what part of your business you want to improve. You need to support your resolution with a concrete action plan and employ a proven method for improving specific aspects of your business.

Now, as an entrepreneur, you’re probably swamped with work. When you're running a small business, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you need to do everything at once. No wonder most people feel so tired and worn out with no time left for other things!

Boost your productivity and improve the prospect of your small business by using these useful hints. Get started on the right track in 2013:

1. Learn to delegate. Delegation not only allows you to have a healthy work-life balance, but perhaps more importantly, it frees up a lot of your time for thinking and planning.

2. Stop procrastination. One of the main reasons we procrastinate is we find our task so overwhelming. The key to overcoming this hurdle is break things down into smaller, more manageable steps.

3. Leverage the power of Business Planning:
a. It improves your organization's ability to adapt to unforeseen events.
b. It crystallizes your goals and objectives.
c. It ensures all your decisions are interrelated.
d. It helps your company keep its competitive edge.
e. It minimizes oversights and errors.

4. Learn something new every day. Learning something new -- whether it relates to your business or not -- will add to your skills and open up new opportunities and will add new dimensions to your life.

5. Embrace change. A lot of people are afraid of change. Change is inevitable! So, you might as well get used to it. To help you become more accepting of change, try to do something new every month or every quarter—a different kind of music, a new hairstyle or attend new networking events. Don’t be afraid to experiment to see what works and what doesn’t.

Five Steps for Making Your New Year’s Resolution Work for You:

1. Focus on one habit or skill at a time. This ensures that you can remain focused and are able to devote the required time and energy to succeed.

2. Introduce changes gradually.

3. Try to make it fun and more interesting – it will seem less like work!

4. Start with the easy one’s first to ease you into the new habit or skill.

5. Seek support from relatives, friends, and colleagues. Find people who are supportive about your resolutions and stay away from non-supportive people!

Ensuring the success of your New Year’s Resolutions -- boosting your personal productivity, improving time management, and experimenting with related skills -- is possible for anyone to accomplish.

Most of us will need a little prompting, a little guidance at first. This is where participating in formal productivity/time management programs such as Work-Smart Mentoring Program will help you accomplish your goals.
The Work-Smart Online Mentoring Program is a comprehensive, step-by-step blueprint for becoming and remaining super productive. This three-week blended learning program (weekly online mentoring sessions plus daily productivity briefings) is designed to help you deal more effectively with the mechanics of becoming highly-productive and will help you successfully establish an action plan that produces long-term sustainable results.