The importance of rituals and routines in your job search cannot be overemphasized. Whether you’re looking for a job full-time or looking for a job while you have one (which is like having two jobs) it’s very important to develop specific patterns of living (rituals and routines) that allow you to focus your mental and emotional efforts on doing everything you can to find a job.Good routines are designed to prepare a job seeker for their best performance, mentally, physically and emotionally.
Routines and rituals mean that you set a schedule that you follow every single day of your job search. If you’re looking for a job full-time, it’s writing out a specific schedule that you don’t deviate from so that you don’t have to “think” and spend mental energy on inconsequential decisions. Inconsequential decisions like, “What time should I get up tomorrow?”… “Which shirt should I wear today?”… “What suit should I wear?”… “What should I have for breakfast?”… “What time should I eat lunch?”… “Who should I call about an interview?”… “What plan should I have for today?” “Should I simply blow today off and go play golf?”… added together take a tremendous amount of mental and emotional energy.
The result of too many of these inconsequential decisions is called decision fatigue. There have been a tremendous number of psychological studies showing that even after making a number of inconsequential decisions that are just that, inconsequential, people get emotionally and psychologically tired and they don’t do as well on cognitive tests.
Decision fatigue is further exacerbated when someone is looking for a job because of the emotional strain of looking for a job and, if it’s the case, trying to keep a job they don’t like which they are leaving as well as trying to find a new one. Decision fatigue can happen really quickly and put the individual in a debilitating mood. I’ve often wondered how much this factor plays in those 94.7 million people who are out of work with 50% of them reporting that they just plain quit looking.
Routines and rituals help minimize decision fatigue. Minimal decision fatigue frees an individual’s mental and emotional efforts to focus on the process of looking for a job, i.e. getting interviews, performing those interviews, etc. It’s hard enough to function well in the job search process without decision fatigue. Bluntly, there’s always going to be some of it, but the idea is to minimize it as much as possible.
Are your rituals and routines helping you?
