Happy New Year!

We are back at work, school, or whatever it is we do from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. And Kristine Simpson and Julia Kent are also back, well rested and ready to jump in to 2013.

This week we chat about our New Years resolutions.

Julia's resolution is no surprise, if you have been listening to the show we all know how much Julia loves to read. So for 2013 Julia's big resolution is to read 24 books.

Kristine divided her resolutions in two categories: professional and personal. This is a good trick if you have specific goals you want to attain within the company you work for (i.e. get promoted, get more involved in internal communications, etc). Her personal goals include reading the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Series, as well as the Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Her professional resolutions include goals that will help her advance her career. Kristine sees 2013 as the year of the video and plans on doing a v-log once a month and producing more videos of Young PR Pros guests.

Julia mentions an interesting resolution from 2012: Young PR Pros. In January 2012, Kristine wrote a blog post about starting a podcast. Immediately after, none other than Julia commented on the blog, and the rest is history. So you see, New Years resolutions ARE possible.

We also mention David Gauthier's resolution to start a blog and use it to connect with professionals. See how far he has come with his new blog Dash Communications.

Kristine and Julia give young professionals five tips to writing down good resolutions that will help advance your career, just follow the SMART way:

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• S: simple. One resolution is one goal.
  
• M: measurable. Make sure you can measure the resolution. You can't measure "be kind in 2013", but you can measure "read 24 books".
  
• A: attainable. Don't make a resolution you can't keep.
  
• R: relevant. Make the resolutions relevant to your career.
  
• T: time-bound. Resolutions are naturally time-bound, to be finished by the end of the year. But, if you want more of a challenge, break you resolutions up and put deadlines on certain aspects of a resolution. For example, if your resolution is to read 24 books, make a secondary resolution to finish two books by the end of January.
  

We wish all our listeners the best of luck with their resolutions. Thanks for helping become the amazing podcast we are today!

We would love to hear from you. Do you have any ideas for episodes? What topics do you want us to discuss in the New Year? Share your opinion or ideas by leaving a comment below or on our Facebook Page, or on our Google+ page, or in our LinkedIn group, or send us an email at youngprpros@gmail.com, or send us a message on Twitter @youngprpros, @kristinesimpson or @kentjulia.