It’s not too late for New Year’s Resolutions: Create your own Work Life Balance

It’s never too late to write your New Year’s resolutions.  Have you written yours yet?  Don’t fret. You can still take the time to do this.  In today’s work-a-day world, most professional people are writing strategic and long range goals for their work but not their personal life. These same people may have exhaustive “to-do” lists but when operating on their own time have no plan for the day to day activities let along longer range personal goals. The most successful people find a way to have work-life balance through successful planning in their personal life.  Your personal time is most valuable.  Why not take the time to have a plan? Your New Year’s Resolutions can serve as a skeletal plan to guide important aspects of your personal life.

New Year’s Resolutions are personal commitments that generally refer to a list lifestyle changes you want to make to improve the quality of your life.  Spending more time with family and friends, losing weight, learning something new, and paying off bills are common New Year’s Resolutions.  For some people, the same resolutions appear year after year without progress.  If that is you, perhaps you were not specific enough with your list or you forgot to include a timetable.

So let’s take this opportunity to do something different. If you did not write your New Year’s Resolutions for 2012, do it now.    By the way, if you don’t have a vision, you might want to start with that. What is the vision how you want to live your life this year (what’s left of 2012 or the next 12 months)? Write it down.  What are three goals that you would like to accomplish?  Next, you will need to list one or two action steps, or objectives, for each of these goals.  Make sure that you write action steps that are specific and include dates for completion. Keep your plan in a visible location so it is a reminder of what you have promised yourself that you will do.

Three months from now take a look at your New Year’s Resolutions and it to see how well you are doing.  It is a great technique to begin to balance your personal and work life.  Why do this?  If you do this you will increase your personal success and be one of the 5% of people who write down their goals.