Time to Keep Your Business New Year's Resolutions
By Carol Tice Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
By Feb. 1, half of all New Year's resolutions are already over. So Staples is trying to help business owners stick with their resolutions by declaring it Motivation Monday -- a day for owners to review and renew their commitment to their business goals for 2010.
How are you doing with your business resolutions? Did you perhaps vow to rev up your marketing, do more in-person networking, have a company retreat, make a key hire? If your priorities for improving your business have slipped onto the back burner, now's the time to rev them up again.
To help owners stay on track with their goals, Staples has set up a site for their Stickk To It Business Challenge. On the site, owners can define their goals and recommit to working on them. You can earn Staples reward points for making progress, so you can not only improve your business, but maybe get yourself a few free office supplies in the deal.
Staples isn't the only place where sticking with business resolutions was being discussed recently. Business consultant and copywriter Chris Marlow interviewed Gary Ryan Blair, The Goals Guy, at the end of January about how to create systems that keep you moving toward your goals.
Why is it so hard to stick to our resolutions? Change-management expert Janel Van Beek says it's a problem of how humans are engineered. We tend to stay in the here and now since that used to be all-important during our species' early development...so planning ahead can be hard. Van Beek suggests setting small rewards for achieving steps along your goal path, and involving your kids or others who will hold you accountable.
Entrepreneurs can tend to be sort of all-over-the-place with the million tasks on their plate, and can have trouble focusing and prioritizing their goals, the 4th Annual Staples National Small Business Survey shows. Conducted by American Consumer Opinion, the study dubs this problem "ping-pong" syndrome, and found 61% of owners were afflicted.
What are your big business goals for 2010, and what's your plan to get them done? How's your progress so far? Leave a comment and let us know.
