I was comparing notes with a candidate this week. We were talking about how easy it is to get completely lost and distracted when surfing the web.
I learned this in the early days of the internet. I was researching mechanical engineers to design racing bicycles. I remember stumbling across a really interesting blog and at the bottom of the first page was a picture from the writers recent vacation in the Dominican.
All of the sudden I found myself on sunwing.ca looking at when I could go to that resort.
Woah! Not productive.
If you are using the internet to search for opportunities, you need to wrap some discipline around your activities or you will just be wasting your time.
Here are some things to try:
- set a time limit – give yourself 40 minutes to an hour
- focus on a specific topic, job title, or company
- open a word document – when you see something that is off the path but worth looking at further, you can copy and paste the web address into the word doc to review in another session. You can also use apps like Evernote or clipper.
- create a goal for your session – perhaps you want to identify four of your old classmates to reconnect with or five jobs that you want to consider.
Adding structure will make your journey much more satisfying and yield better results. Because after all, you don’t want to book the trip to Costa Rica until you have the new job to pay for it!