Office New Year Resolutions
Five Office New Year Resolutions
For many, a new year means new beginnings. It can help some create new habits, and attempt to break others. Consider these office new year resolutions as a primer for helping your team bring in the new year.
1. Leave the Negativity Behind
If you’re like most people, you drive to work. If you’re like me, you have to walk the dog and do a dozen things before leaving the house. Sometimes this can become frustrating (like on rainy days when the dog doesn’t want to go outside) making you rush. Once you get into your car, you encounter hundreds of obstacles piling on the stress. Finally arriving at your destination, you’re a mess, and it’s written all over your face.
Instead of rushing out of the car, take a few moments to breath, relax, and reconnect with yourself. Just a few moments of reconnecting with yourself will help drive most of that stress away, and keep your coworkers in a better state of mind then if you were to crash through the door with all your stresses that followed you during your commute. You will also be more focused and ready for the challenges that await.
2. Clean Space Offers a Clear Mind
Now that you’re safely at your desk, look around you. Do you have papers everywhere? Are there unwashed dishes that have layers of dust hidden in corners? Have you updated your calendar? When was the last time you wiped down your table top surface? I don’t want to be that guy, but have you flipped your keyboard upside down lately? It’s most likely full of crumbs, dead skin, and who knows what.
This is the best time to clean your area, thoroughly. After all, you do spend a lot of time here. The cleaner your work area, the clearer your mindset. An organized workspace provides more opportunity for a clear path of productivity. Less distractions, more progress.
3. Break Morning Rituals, Start New Habits
What is the first thing you normally do when you sit down at your office computer? Check emails? Get up to make coffee? Maybe you log on to Facebook or Twitter. Perhaps you jump on to Google to search for that scarf you’ve been pricing out. Now is the time to say “no more” to distractions.
Social media (excluding the social media manager or employee) is a waste of time and energy. Give yourself a challenge, and set aside specific times throughout the day to log in to your social media accounts. Wait until you’re on your lunch break to search Amazon for a new television. Better yet, try going on a social media cleanse, and take back what’s important, which is nothing that’s happening on social media!
4. Facing the Elephant in the Room
Holidays make me feel like an elephant. All the food, couch resting, relaxing, and sleeping. The new year is the time when gyms get great membership signups for this reason. I know, it’s not nice to call myself an elephant, but let’s be real, my eating habits are terrible. I can’t even pronounce most of the ingredients in most of the food I bring to the office. I have no idea where most of the food I eat comes from except from that place we get takeout for lunch, but even then, where do they get their food? And if I’m drinking zero calorie drinks, why does it look like I’m gaining calories?!
Changing eating habits is the quickest and easiest thing one can do for the new year. It’s simple, STOP BUYING JUNK! That’s it! If you don’t buy it, you won’t have it to eat. Rather than buying processed foods in prepackaged bags, get some carrots, almonds, bananas, or whatever fruits, nuts, and vegetables you like with you to snack on. Try out those “Meatless Mondays” and incorporate homemade meals into your weekly food menu.
5. You Know it was Coming
Your mind tells you it’s not good to sit down all day, yet the time goes by so quickly and before you know it, you’re in your car on your way home. It was a full nine hours of sitting at work, now you’re sitting in your car. When you get home, you’ll be sitting at the table, then sitting in your chair watching tv, then off to bed.
We should be standing up and stretching every fifteen minutes. Consider the RiseUP to give you the option to sit, and stand, when you’re needing to get up and stretch.
Share these office new year resolutions with your coworkers. Add to this list, and make a more productive, healthier time for everyone around you.
