How to stay committed to your business resolutions

Last updated on April 26th, 2013Time management0 comments

It’s the time of year to make resolutions.  If you’re like me then I’m sure you’ll have set great plans for your business – the start of a new year can make you feel like you can change the world!  But fast forward a few weeks and we can begin to lose momentum on those plans and ideas, and goals start to slip by.


So how can you stay committed to your business resolutions?

Rather than set a goal, instead make a promise to yourself.  For example, you may decide that this year you will build a contact list and send regular emails out to those contacts.  It’s easy to add that to your plan and give yourself a deadline but as we all know, when things start to get busy then deadlines can slip past and we tell ourselves that we’ll do it next week when we have more time.  And of course, next week never comes.

Instead make a promise to yourself that you will grow your list to 200 people by the end of the year and that you will send at least one email a month to those contacts.  When making that promise, think of the consequences of not doing it, eg the missed marketing opportunities from not building a list and keeping in contact with them regularly.  How will this affect your bottom line?

Remember that you are more personally committed to a promise that you make to yourself than an arbitrary goal, which means that if you make a promise but don’t keep it then you are more likely to feel that you have let yourself down.

Once you’ve made that commitment then you’ll want to find ways to achieve the goal that you set yourself, whether that’s setting out the steps to do it yourself or outsourcing it to someone like a virtual assistant.  Then make yourself accountable to it by sharing it publicly with someone else.

One of the promises that I made to myself this year is to create a product aimed at my target market that will help to solve a problem that they are struggling with in their business.

So if you have plans that you really want to achieve in the next 12 months, then make a personal commitment to completing them; think about what it would be like once you have achieved them and the consequences to your business if you don’t.

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Valerie Eaton

Valerie Eaton provides virtual PA and online marketing services to self-employed professionals who are feeling overwhelmed by their workload and want more time to focus on growing their business.

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