Time can rob you blind, especially if you’re out of work. How many weeks until your severance or COBRA ends? How many weeks after that until your savings are used up? How many hours are there in the day to look for your next gig?
At GetHired we always advocate working smarter rather than just longer or harder. But that said, job-finding is still a numbers game. The more time you put in (using smart techniques of course), the sooner you’ll get results – a job. So, how are you spending your available job search time? Are you being 100% productive or are you letting the time bandit steal precious minutes and hours away from you each day? If so, here’s an incredibly powerful tool Career & Life Coach, Paul Bob Velick, (www.paulbobcoach.com) shared with me recently that increased my productivity about ten-fold. After he described it to me, I dubbed it “High Noon”. The concept is simple. Every night before you shut down, review your To Do List, highlighting those items which are critical to get done the next day – your “NEED-To-Do’s (versus your “NICE-To-Do’s”). Then when you get started in the morning, make sure you get your need-to-do’s completed by noon. No excuses, no backdoors – have it all done when the clock hits 12.
In the past, I’d typically put off those items that I found most tedious, difficult or dull. I’d spend the morning getting the easy and fun stuff done but then when I hit the afternoon I still had most of the big ticket items to tackle. After half a day already at my desk, I often didn’t have the time or energy to handle all those major-effort items. So many of them would get pushed to the next day. Or the next after that. And as more and more of them got stacked up, I had even less enthusiasm to deal with them. So, the easy items that had minimal benefit all got done while the important tasks that had the potential to move my business forward got delayed, sometimes for days. Not a good strategy for success.
The first day I tried High Noon I was amazed. By getting the big, important stuff out of the way without delay, I was getting the benefit of them much sooner. But something even more impactful happened. When I was pushing things off, they didn’t go away. They were still there, hanging over my head like an anvil. I would find myself dawdling before getting to my desk in the morning, knowing that these big tasks had piled up and were waiting for me. Getting them out of the way immediately lifted that burden. Not only did I get everything done everyday on both my Need-to-Do and Nice-to-Do lists – I had time and energy left over at the end of the day for additional items. And I couldn’t wait to hit my desk the next morning. And without the dread of uncompleted tasks hanging over me, I started enjoying my evening and weekends more – leisure hours that I find essential to recharge my batteries for the next day’s efforts.
So, give Paul’s High Noon technique a try and see if it doesn’t turbo charge your job search productivity. As Benjamin Franklin said, “You may delay, but time will not.” High Noon should help you put a stop to the Time Bandit. And you might be amazed at how productive you really can be.