Made your New Year’s Resolutions, yet? Or aren’t you going to bother this year?

Every year, I make resolutions.
Every year, I set ambitious professional goals.
Every year, I keep up with them for a while.
Every year, one by one, they fall by the wayside. Something else always comes along that has a higher priority or greater urgency.

This year, I want to try something a little different. Instead of big, ambitious goals for myself and my freelance business, I’m going to try baby steps. Instead of a two-page list of annual resolutions, I’m going to try a trimmed-down list of four manageable daily commitments.

Just for today:

• I will be pleasant and welcoming to each caller on my business phone, rather than resenting the interruption or assuming that the call is from a telemarketer.
• I will set and meet a mini-deadline for each client project, aiming at finishing each project ahead of schedule.
• I will spend an hour on marketing my business, whether it’s designing a new brochure, seeking out networking opportunities, updating my website, staying in touch with former clients, or brainstorming with a colleague about new seminar ideas. One hour—even if I have a project deadline. One hour—even if I’m tired.
• I will read something that will improve a skill or push my mind in a direction it doesn’t normally go: a book on PHP programming, an issue of Technical Communication or Intercom, a few articles from Arts and Letters Daily , or that art history article that a friend forwarded—anything to jumpstart the creativity that happens when I move outside my standard routine.

  How about you? You can use the Comments feature to share your resolutions—or lack of them—with your Rochester Chapter colleagues.

  Kat Nagel
  Proof Sheet editor