A career resolution is exactly what it sounds like: a resolution for your career intended to help you grow into a better professional. At Work It DAILY, we believe that you need to work on your career every day (yes, you do, in fact, need to "work it daily"). So, everyone should make a career resolution or two along with those other ambitious personal resolutions. They can be little things like learning a new skill or growing your professional network, or bigger goals like landing a promotion or getting a new job.
But how do you know what kind of career resolutions to make?
You can begin by asking yourself, "Am I where I want to be in my career?" If your answer is "no," you need to take a closer look at your career goals.
Here are five more career questions you should be asking yourself this new year to figure out how to grow your career and become the professional you know you can be.
1. Am I Proud Of My Job Title?
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You could be a janitor or a neurosurgeon, it doesn't matter. If you aren't proud of what you do for a living, there's something missing: passion and purpose.
Career burnout is real, but sometimes it's deeper than that. Our passion at 25 won't necessarily be our passion at 40. And that's okay.
When we are passionate about what we do, we are proud because we are doing what we think is important, what we love doing. We feel a sense of purpose. We are adding value to and making a difference in this crazy world—in a small, but significant way.
Every job is important. No matter what your job title is, if you aren't proud of it, and don't feel like you can leverage your strengths as a professional in the position, you should absolutely change that. Identify that one problem you want to find a solution to and go after it. What are you waiting for?
Remember, the only bad job is the one you aren't passionate about, the one that isn't allowing you to leverage your professional strengths and reach your potential.
If you don't know what your professional strengths are or what kind of work you'd find purposeful and fulfilling, we recommend taking our free career quizzes.
Take the quizzes now to learn your unique combination of professional strengths and how they can help you get better career results so you can be proud of what you do.
2. Do I Feel Secure In My Career?
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This is a bit different from job security. Actually, job security doesn't exist. Every job is temporary. Think you can stay in the same job for decades and then retire? Think again. While that may have been commonplace for past generations, today's workforce and job market are completely different than what they were a decade or two ago.
So what does it mean to feel secure in our careers? When we believe as professionals that we can add value wherever we are.
You are a business-of-one. A company won't want to invest in you if they don't know the kinds of services you provide, the kind of value you could add to the organization, and the problems you could solve for them. Here are some examples of questions that will help you determine if you're secure in your career:
- Are you adding value at your current job?
- Are you honing your skills, expanding your network, and building your personal brand?
- Do you feel confident that if you lost your job, you'd be able to find a comparable one in the same field?
- Do you feel confident you'd be able to demonstrate to potential employers how you add value?
Since every job is temporary, it's extremely important to constantly work on our careers and ask ourselves these questions frequently so we always feel secure in our businesses-of-one.
3. Will I Be Able To Achieve Wealth?
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When most people think of "wealth," they think of dollar signs and anything that you can attach a monetary value to. Our jobs help us build wealth. We're not going to tell you that money isn't important. Of course it is! It allows you to live the life you want to live. In many ways, money equals freedom.
But the truth is, there are other forms of wealth that are more important that you can't attach any monetary value to.
Real wealth comes in the form of family, friends, hobbies, experiences, knowledge, and community. If you don't have these things, money will never fill that void.
So, is your career allowing you to build this type of wealth? The intangible kind? Or are your relationships suffering because of your job? Is your work-life balance nonexistent? Do you have any time to pursue hobbies, learn, or volunteer?
Your career should never inhibit you from achieving real wealth. The best job isn't the one that pays the most. It's the one that pays the bills and gives you enough time to live, too.
4. Do I Have Any Regrets?
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Just asking ourselves this question can be difficult because maybe we don't want to know the answer. Acknowledging that you regret something in your life is the first step to making a change. Guess what? There's still time to chase your dreams!
If you do have regrets, that doesn't mean you haven't been a successful professional. That also doesn't mean you haven't had a good career. You could be the most successful person, but if you never got up the courage to start that business, make that career change, or go back to school, you'll most likely think, "What if?" for the rest of your life.
You'll never know if you don't try. Don't be afraid of failure. Life is just one big experiment, and it's your job to learn from those experiments. That's how you discover what works and what doesn't. That's how you discover what's possible.
And even if you do "fail," that's an incredibly more valuable experience than waiting out the clock on a mediocre career. So, don't give up on your dreams just yet.
5. Can I Reach My Full Potential In This Role? In This Career?
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When we feel like we have more to contribute to society, that's a sign we haven't yet reached our full potential. Do you feel like you're wasting your potential at your current job? Do you think you'd reach your full potential in another career?
Really think about what you want your professional legacy to be. It's a lot harder to get up in the morning when you don't find fulfillment in your work. When it comes time for you to retire, are you going to look back on your career and feel like you could have accomplished much, much more with those 50 years?
Everyone has unique gifts, skills, and expertise. When we focus on developing ourselves as individuals, as businesses-of-one, it's a lot easier to share those things with the world. Give yourself a chance to reach your full potential. If you haven't taken our free quizzes yet, your results will help you do just that. You may be surprised by what you can accomplish.
Before you get back into the same routine at work this year, we hope you take a few minutes to ask yourself these career questions. Listen carefully to how you answer them. You may need to make a career resolution or two.
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This is a true story as told to JustJobs Academy which houses career interviews and job search advice for professionals in any industry.Visit to read about how to be precise and tame your ego on the job.
I have done internet marketing part-time for the past ten years. Last year, I made the move to become a full-time internet marketing professional.
Some people automatically thought I was trying out some kind of pyramid selling scheme when I told them I was making money online in my spare time.
Now that I do online marketing full-time, some of the same people are asking me to show them how to do it. My work has nothing to do with pyramid schemes, but it isn't as easy as people think either.
Some of the things I do to make money online include creating websites, writing content, updating social media sites, and promoting online products and services.
1. Creating Websites - Most of the time, the websites I create are for myself. In addition, sometimes I will set up a site for a small business that wants an online presence.
2. Writing Content - There are a lot of website owners online who are looking for people to write for them. I do occasional jobs through Fiverr, but most of my work is from higher paying clients who want articles or blog posts on their site. Other people pay me to create information products they can sell online.
3. Updating Social Media Sites - When I write website content for someone, I always offer to create and update a Facebook and Twitter page for them for an additional fee. Lots of places know they should have a social media presence, but they don't really know how to get started or keep it updated.
4. Promoting Online Products and Services - A lot of the money I make as a marketing professional comes from being an affiliate of various companies. That means the company pays me a commission. Three of the programs that pay the most consistently for me are Google Adsense, Amazon, and TangoWire.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate my job satisfaction as a 7. When things are going the way they should, this job is wonderful. The problem for me is having to rely on other people for payment. I am working toward diversifying what I do online so that I am not overly reliant on one person or marketing method to make money.
Some aspects of being an internet marketing professional are amazing. The best part is that I have a lot of freedom. My hours are really flexible, and I get to be home with my family. If we want to take a road trip, I can work from anywhere I can pick up a WiFi signal on my laptop.
My previous job as an elementary school teacher helped me keep up with the research and writing skills I use as a marketing professional. The other people I know in this profession come from a wide variety of backgrounds. I think the only thing we all have in common is a drive to have the freedom that comes from working for yourself.
When I got started back in 2001, there were not as many opportunities to make money online. The first thing I did was get paid a few pennies for each website I visited on this network. I only made around $20 that first month, but I was so excited.
The first "real" money I made as a marketer was by promoting a dating site through TangoWire. You could use your own domain and were paid half of the money from anyone who opted for a paid membership. That and other affiliate programs brought me up to several hundred dollars a month.
In order to go full-time, I added writing and website work to the mix. Between affiliate marketing and those services, I was able to replace the income from my teaching job.
Now that I am working online full-time, I have met a lot of very successful marketers. They all have one thing I don't - a list of past customers.
The people with the biggest lists can make money each day just by sending out a new promotion. If I were to go back and do anything differently, I would have started my list years ago.
I do love working as an internet marketer, and if I'm not careful, I could end up being on the computer from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep.
When I notice I am spending too much time online, I have to stop and set up a schedule that allows me to make the best use of my time.
Working as a marketing professional online gives me the freedom I have always wanted. Now it is up to me to make the most of that freedom by spending quality time with the people I love.
Job online marketing professional image from Bigstock
