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Shary Raske |
May 2010 One-More-Thingitis: Bad for a Career Change Not only is one-more-thingitis bad for a career change, it’s also bad for your life even after you’ve made a career transition. Simply put, one-more-thingitis is when you devote your time to a certain activity with a certain time limit and you go over it. If you find yourself saying, “I’m just going to look at one more job posting and then I’ll close it down for the day”, you are suffering from this malady. If you send out eleven emails related to your job search and you promised to send out ten, you are suffering from one-more-thingitis. Here’s a typical scenario: You wake up in the morning, shower, dress, eat and get ready for work. The first attack of one-more-thingitis hits when you read your emails before you leave. You’ve allotted 15 minutes, and you decided to respond to one that takes 20 minutes to answer. Now you have no time to look at the others. But you decide to cram 15 minutes worth of emails into 5 minutes. It ends up being 10. You are fifteen minutes late for work. Not to worry, it’s suppose to be a light day today. It isn’t. You’ve just been slammed with a new project, and because you were late, didn’t take the time to figure out what’s the most important action to be taken. You are in react mode which is where one-more-thingitis thrives. Because you were late, you decide to stay later at the end of the day, and once again, those darn emails get the better of you. Instead of staying 15 extra minutes, you stay 30. On the way home, you suddenly remember that you had made plans to dine at a very special restaurant, with a very special person. You call, no answer. You arrive at the restaurant 30 minutes late, with your special someone, extra specially mad. You make it an early evening, so you can job search. You get home at 8:30 and you are too tired and exasperated to do anything. So you decide to unwind with a little television, and the next thing you know it’s 11:30. Four weeks later when you evaluate how much time you spent on your job search, the grand total was 45 minutes. Mmmmmm. Then you start fantasizing about quitting your job so you’ll have more time to devote to your search. Don’t do it! Time will fill up and you will be no closer to finding the job of your dreams. That’s what one-more-thingitis does. There are so many hours in a day. Take an inventory of what’s important to you. Here’s mine: Family, Friendships, Social Life, Volunteering, Worship/Meditation, Reading, Writing, Professional Development, Marketing, Service Delivery, Financial Controls, Staying in Touch, Eating, Exercising, Sleeping, and Personal Growth. There’s also the administrative stuff that we all do, lawn mowing, car repairs, home upgrades, household chores, and planning priorities. Now if your list is similar to mine and you add a job search, where are you going to plug it into time and how much time is realistically available? If you sacrifice sleep for your job search, you will eventually come to a screeching halt before you cross the finish line. If you sacrifice job performance for your job search, you may find yourself unemployed before you wanted to be. Many full-time-employed job hunters, at least initially, cram an additional 5 to 10 hours a week without negotiating with family members. That makes people you care about really cranky. What are you willing to give up in order to add a job search? What many out-of-work job hunters do, at least initially, is they spend the most time on actions that give the least amount of payoff. The goal is to generate job interviews, so isn’t more better? Not necessarily. Then there are some of you who work best with sudden bursts of activity, followed by down time and others work steady-as-she goes. If either of these styles work best for you, don’t change it! If you work with sudden bursts of activity, then put together a plan of doing three things a day, no matter what, to move your job search forward. If you work steady-as-she-goes, then doing two hours of job search activities, no matter what, will move your job search forward. But it has to be the right actions in the right proportion to payoff. If you haven’t searched for a job recently, you may benefit from a diagnostic session to evaluate what’s working, what needs attention, and what needed to be added to the mix. If you develop the right strategy, followed by an accountability system, followed by an effective debriefing with emotional support, you won’t waste your efforts and you will fine work sooner. Time is precious. Don’t blow it with one too many things to do. TIme is money. $ $ $ $ One-more-thingitis costs you money, too. 90% of my business comes from referrals. Thank you for the recent referrals from Stephanie and Candace. If you know someone who is stuck, stalled, or dissatisfied with their current work situation, please consider referring them to Courage to Change. After just one session that career changer will have a written, preliminary plan on how to move forward. Call today! (314) 560-1088. Next issue: Making the Economy Work for You |
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Shary Raske, Career Strategist, Smarter, more effective career change! Delivered by Webvalence |