Now that 2025 is finally here, you’re sure to be asked the dreaded question: What’s your new year’s resolution? New survey findings from Jobseeker found that only 9% of US workers reached their career resolutions in 2024 and yet an overwhelming 85% of professionals plan to set career resolutions for the year ahead. So if you’re a chronic resolution abandoner, this is the time to commit and set yourself a career goal for the new year.
Here’s how to set a career resolution for 2025 that you’ll actually achieve.
What Is A Career Resolution?
For many, a new year’s resolution for your career can feel daunting and doomed to fail, so it’s easier to avoid choosing one at all. To progress in your professional development though, it’s important to set actionable intentions towards your overall goals. Whether you want to find a new job, secure a promotion, gain added responsibility or explore a new venture, naming your career resolution is often the most powerful step to actually accomplishing it.
“A career resolution is a broad intention or focus, usually relating to your professional development or progression, whereas goals are more specific and measurable,” mindset coach and What Am I Doing With My Life? podcast host Elyssa Desai tells me. “The two complement each other, with resolutions providing an overarching direction for the year and goals acting as the actionable steps to achieve it.”
And now is an especially beneficial time to reflect on what you want out of your career in the short and long term, and start fresh in pursuit of it.
“The end of the year and beginning of the next provides a natural time to pause and reflect on your career. Employees and organisations often review their progress and plan for the future, creating an atmosphere of change and motivation. By aligning with this shift in energy, you can piggyback off the collective momentum, a key to maintaining progress,” said Desai.
Why Are We Abandoning Our Career Related New Year’s Resolutions?
Defining your career resolution now is important and meaningful, but research shows that a staggering 94% of us abandon our new year’s resolutions within two months. Staying motivated and keeping the big picture in mind can be difficult when the day-to-day challenges of work life take up your time and attention.
Losing drive towards your career resolution is easy when you aren’t seeing results quickly enough or when you’re faced with an obstacle you didn’t expect. “It’s common to think ‘what’s the point?’ and give up. This feeling can be exacerbated by scrolling on social media and believing everyone else is achieving their goals, even when that might not be the reality,” Desai explained.
Another pitfall for your career resolution is overextending yourself by committing to too many changes within a short time period. It’s all too common to use up your energy in January by resolving to post daily on LinkedIn, attend networking events every week, promote yourself at work, take on a mentee and sign up for training – and by February, you’re exhausted and give up.
“Although the excitement for change in the new year is understandable, doing too much can often result in overwhelm and missing one thing can trigger an all-or-nothing mindset, making you feel like you’ve failed and leading you to give up entirely,” said Desai.
How To Set A 2025 Career Resolution You’ll Actually Achieve
Although goal-setting is crucial to developing yourself and your career, it’s important to remember that the year is long and you’re much more likely to achieve your career resolution with patience rather than pressure.
So to set yourself up for success in 2025, Desai shared six actionable ways to set a career resolution you’ll actually achieve.
- Zoom Out To Zoom In: Take a step back to see the bigger picture of your life. Reflect on your personal version of success and how your career fits into it. With this perspective, zoom in and identify which career resolutions matter the most right now. Create a visual representation of your broader life goal as a mind map or vision board and use this to motivate you throughout the year.
- Monthly Challenges: Gamify your career resolution by breaking your goal into actionable monthly challenges. Get creative and consider involving others in your team as well. Monthly challenges getting you closer towards your resolution can make it feel more manageable and provide a motivating sense of progress.
- Belief-Backed Goals: Develop a set of beliefs that reinforce your ability to achieve your career goals. Ask yourself: What does the version of me who has achieved this goal believe about themself? What is possible for them? Do they deserve to achieve this goal? Repeat your list of affirming statements regularly to strengthen them within your mind. When your mindset aligns with your aspirations, it will feel easier to achieve them.
- Time Swap: Identify activities that consume your time each week but don’t add significant value to your life, like mindlessly scrolling social media, meetings without real value or tasks that could be automated. Replace them with a dedicated time block to work towards your goal. This intentional time swap helps you to prioritize your development without feeling overwhelmed by adding more to your already busy life.
- Goal Club: Accountability is one of the best ways to help you stay motivated and sustain your progress. As a twist on a book club, set up a goal club to regularly meet with friends or coworkers to discuss and support each other’s goals.
- Test And Learn: Treat your career goals as experiments rather than rigid plans by trying different strategies and regularly reflecting on what is and is not working well. Be open to trying new ways to network, add value or self-promote at work, and allow yourself to let go of the approaches that aren’t working for you.
Setting your 2025 career resolution intentionally and breaking it up into smaller pieces over the course of the year will help you stay motivated and on track to achieve it. By this time next year, you’ll have a lot to be proud of.