New year, new career?

Whoah, here she comes. Watch out boys she'll chew you up. Whoah, here she comes...she's a...

Um..well, okay, maybe making new year's resolutions isn't that scary, but the approach of Dick Clark's party in Times Square still makes some feel the pressure of new beginnings and the need to start the new year, as Anne Shirley said, "fresh with no mistakes in it". We somehow feel compelled to make rash promises to ourselves.

This year, we'll run for an hour a day on the treadmill looking unbelievably fab in expensive yoga pants that "do something great to our butts".

This year, we'll get up early and read the classics (except for Hemingway, yeech).

This year, we'll get our dream job and tell off nasty Nellie in accounting as we ride off into the sunset with the sweetness of escape and the last piece of cheesecake from the lunch room in our bellies.

Oh yeah, and we'll achieve world peace and the body of Jenifer Garner while we're at it.

I don't want to downplay the efforts of people who make new year's resolutions. It's just that I've learned that what we mostly do at this time of year is set ourselves up for failure (I am finally resigned to the fact that I am never going to like Hemingway) because we set the goals too big.

My last post was about Santa encouraging you to dream big. And yes, you can probably accuse me of being a little "holy boomerang batman" but I'm really not going back on what I said before. Dreaming big is part of the journey. But the old adage says, "how do you eat an elephant?" The answer: "one bite at a time" applies to more than just this slightly nauseating analogy. It really applies to new year's resolutions and career resolutions. The shortest distance between two career points is often not successfully achieved by leaping. It is usually achieved by planning and baby steps, side steps, stretching and working towards something steadily, unceasingly, in the manner of Ripley going after that pesky alien.

Dull, you say? Ahem...how can you call Ripley dull? Okay, so your career goal is not an alien whose butt you can kick. But the same steady, unceasing focus and sticktoitiveness works! Try working backwards from your big goal and chunking it into monthly--or even yearly--smaller goals. If you've been unhappy with your current situation for a while, what's a bit of extra time? Wouldn't you rather take a bit longer to get there and actually get there, than sprint and trip and fall or give up?

Think: s-t-r-e-t-c-h vs sprint, timbit vs doughnut...um, yeah.

Happy New Year! And happy new, maybe-not-immediately-but-coming-soon-to-a-theatre-new-you, career too.