Get Rid of These 6 Habits for a More Successful New Year

By Chelsea Babin

If you want to step up your success, productivity, and career performance in the New Year, you’ll need to say goodbye to a few things from this year. If you have one or more of these 6 habits, they could be holding you back from your full potential. Get rid of these 6 habits for a more successful New Year!

1. Delaying Training and Growth: You know you need to continuously learn and grow if you want to succeed in a technology career. But, sometimes, it’s easy to delay training and growth because you don’t want to invest in yourself or you don’t think you have time. If you don’t make time for this now, you never will. Stop delaying training and growth and invest in your future self.

2. Stuck on Learning Rather Than Failing Fast: On the other hand, some people continuously learn but they never try to apply that knowledge. If you’re stuck on the learning stage and you’re afraid to get started, you need to welcome the idea of failing fast and failing often. This will help you learn a lot faster and you’ll gain the practical knowledge and experience that you need.

3. Prioritizing Doing More Instead of Doing More Effective Things: Some people think the root of productivity is the ability to continuously add tasks to their plate and do more things. Instead, your focus should be on prioritizing the most effective tasks, strategically focusing your best work on things that make the biggest impact.

4. Forgetting to Relate Tech or Industry Speak Effectively: You have a wealth of technical knowledge, and that’s great, but if you can only communicate this knowledge or your process with people who have just as much if not more technical knowledge than you do, you’re missing out. Forgetting to relate tech or industry speak effectively to those with less expertise than you can really hold you back and pigeonhole you in your IT career.

5. Holding Your Ideas Back and Not Listening to Others: Thanks to Steve Jobs, more employers and technologists know that great ideas can come from anywhere. That means that you shouldn’t hold your ideas back, you should take them to your team or your boss and try to get them implemented. Additionally, you should listen to others more intently. They may pitch an idea off hand that could save everyone a lot of time and improve daily processes.

6. Rushing Through Your Mornings: The way you start your day sets the pace for the rest of your day. So, if you’re panicked and rushing through your morning routine to get to work on time, this habit can leave you feeling scrambled and on edge your entire workday. If you’re regularly rushing through your mornings, you need to either reduce the amount of things you do each morning (by doing some the night before or nixing something altogether) or set your alarm clock to an earlier time.

7. Never Planning Ahead: Most people have deadlines and other long-term goals set, but these lofty goals and projects with long time frames require a lot of planning ahead. This takes more than setting one big deadline. You need to plan ahead in small chunks, regularly referencing your plan and adjusting as needed. This will help you stay focused on multiple goals and multiple projects without letting the ball drop.

Say goodbye to these 6 habits if you want to have a more successful career in the New Year! These practices hold you back from your potential and diminish your productivity.