Five Ways to Kick-Start the New Year

During my time as a mechanical engineer, I often felt like I was sprinting up until the tail end of the year to finish deadlines and wrap up the year. However, the beginning of the new year always felt like a good time to take a step back and finally hit refresh! Whether you are the type of person who believes in setting New Year’s resolutions or not, this time of year tends to be a great time to reevaluate different aspects of your work life and start fresh.

As we all recover from the holidays, I recommend trying out these 5 tips to kick-start your career in 2024!

SMART Goals

Goal setting in general is important, but reframing your generic goals into SMART goals can help make them more manageable and achievable. The SMART framework is:

• S: specific
• M: measurable
• A: achievable
• R: relevant
• T: timebound

When it comes to goals, often our mind may go straight to traditional professional development-type goals like licensure or obtaining a new certification. While these are great, don’t be afraid to explore outside of these topics. Is there a project type your firm does that you have always wanted to explore? Maybe you are an electrical engineer and have always wanted to be exposed to low-voltage design – consider whether it is feasible for this to be a potential goal! Say you are a junior mechanical engineer and haven’t gotten the opportunity to be onsite – perhaps one of your goals relates to increased time doing surveys or helping with construction administration on a project. Thinking holistically about what you want to achieve in this next year professionally and transforming them into SMART goals can be a strong way to start out the new year.  

Vocalizing these goals to your supervisor or mentors is also a great way to stay accountable and open yourself up to opportunities – after all, people can’t help you unless they know what you are working towards! One additional thing to factor here is what policies your firm has regarding professional development benefits. Often, these budgets reset at the beginning of the year, so now is a great time to investigate what your firm offers. This way, you can be proactive in researching any conferences, trainings, or other courses you may be interested in pursuing as part of your SMART goals.   

Auditing Your Professional Support System

The new year is a great time to think through your professional support system. Do you currently have a mentor? Do you have an idea of what you are hoping to get out of this mentor/mentee relationship? From my experience, I’ve always found value in having a variety of mentors, each for different reasons. For example, I had a colleague who would always be my go-to for very technical questions that came up on projects. I had a different colleague who had a strong construction and design background, so I would go to him to discuss the construction implications of a design. As a woman in the AEC industry, I was always interested in having a fellow female who I could relate to and learn from on both a life and career front, so I found a mentor who could fulfill this for me.

Consider who in your network could be a valuable mentor (whether officially or unofficially) in some aspect of your career and see if they would be willing to meet with you! You never know what you might learn throughout the year from this person.

Streamline Your Workflow

The beginning of a new year is as good a time as any to look at your workflow and see if there are inefficiencies that you can streamline. I remember one year, I realized there were multiple “cheat sheets” and reference guides that I would reference for pipe sizes, typical duct velocities for various applications, estimating transformer heat loads, etc. I realized I would have to dig around my notes each time I needed these. I finally took an hour one day and organized my reference-type notes into a hard copy binder and digital copies into a folder. Could this solution arguably be considered basic organization? Yes. But I will be the first to say that in the rush of day-to-day project work, taking a step back and investing an hour of time into an organization is not always top of mind.

Whether it is revisiting your notetaking systems, finding a more efficient method of tracking your time, or finally fixing that pesky cell in a calculation spreadsheet that always causes you issues, take advantage of this new year to take a couple of hours and streamline your systems. It is an investment of time that will pay off throughout the year!

Re-consider Ways to Build Your Network

Building your network is an invaluable way to meet new people in our industry, learn about people’s careers, and open your career to new opportunities. Amidst our busy work lives, it is easy to lose sight of this. The beginning of a new year is a good time to think about some of the different ways you can expand your network thoughtfully to set yourself up for success during the coming year.  

I talk more about the power of industry associations in this article, but the moral of the story, joining an industry association is a great way to develop your network. Start by attending a general meeting and from there, try to continue attending regularly, introducing yourself to other members, and even seeing if you want to get involved further on a committee or eventually a board position.

Internal networking within your own firm can also be valuable. In past firms, whenever a new employee would start, I would always encourage them to set up internal “get to know you” chats with colleagues just to pick their brains about their career story, and cool projects they’ve worked on, and just learn more about them as a person.

Think About Your Career Values

As engineers, architects, and professionals in the AEC industry, we often don’t introspect as much as we should. And perhaps it doesn’t come naturally for all of us! But one of the most valuable things you can do in your career is to think holistically and intentionally about your career. The beginning of a new year is a great time to take stock of what is truly important to you in your daily work life.

I used to mentor an engineer and during our weekly check-ins, I would have us each run through one thing we loved and didn’t love doing that past week (the exercise was adapted from the Book Love + Work). This simple but valuable exercise gave us both insight into the things that brought us joy or excitement as part of our roles, and the things that we didn’t enjoy as much. While you can’t magically remove aspects of your job that you don’t love, often you can seek out ways to incorporate more of the things you enjoy into your role.

At DesignForce, we encourage career professionals to create their own “Values List” where you consider the ten most important factors in your career and rank them. You can read more about the Values List here. This list can be used as a valuable tool to check in with yourself and see if there are parts of your role that can be optimized to bring you more career fulfillment. Some example questions you can think about to get the ideas flowing:

• If you closed your eyes and imagined your ideal work environment, what comes to mind?
• What aspects of work get you excited to open your laptop in the morning?
• What are the characteristics of people you enjoy working and collaborating with?
• What does an ideal relationship with a manager look like to you?

Final Thoughts

Consider the beginning of each new year as a time to get organized, motivated, and excited for all that the upcoming year may bring! I hope these tips can help you get the year kicked off strong. If you want to discuss more on SMART goal-setting, creating a values list, or anything related to career development, feel free to reach out to me at th@designforce.me. I love getting to share my knowledge of the AEC industry with other professionals and helping to make a positive impact on careers. Cheers to a happy, healthy, and impactful 2024!