How to Make Your Job Search an Effective Routine

Discipline is the key to achieving great things in any endeavor. No matter what you aspire to or what level you're at in that journey, the all-too-often overlooked element of success is consistency in the necessary tasks. And a job search is no different.

But "discipline" doesn't have to be some kind of hardcore, martial arts type of intense brain game. You can shortcut the process and gain the same results by making it a routine. To understand the power of these patterns, think about the other habits in your life. When was the last time you missed brushing your teeth for a day? It was probably a long time ago.

Now, imagine if you could apply that same sort of unflaggingly consistent effort to your career - you'd be unstoppable. Here's how to set up effective routines that can propel your job search to a new level.

How much time?
The first step is to allocate a realistic amount of time you can consistently devote to your job search. And by "consistent," I mean five days a week, month after month, for as long as it takes. Even if that means only a half hour every day, that's a lot better than two hours one day, none the next, ten minutes the day after that. Consistency is the key to any routine.

The right time of day
Pick a time of day that you consistently have free to devote entirely to your job search. Are you a morning person? Try getting up a little earlier and hitting it full blast right away. This also has the added benefit of letting you work before the house gets noisy. Or maybe you could get a little more time in the evening by trading chores with your spouse. Whatever the case, find a time when you have plenty of energy and few distractions every single day.

The best use of your time
Next, make a schedule of how you're going to use that time. The key here is to be realistic. If all you have is a half hour every day, don't plan on looking for jobs, sending out resumes, and emailing networking contacts every evening. That's far too much. Such unrealistic goals will only leave you discouraged, tempting you to give up before you really get your routine going. Instead, try breaking it down into chunks. Perhaps you could use your thirty minutes one night to search Internet job boards. Then the next night, you could aim to send out one or two resumes. Then the next you could email networking contacts. Such a reasonable schedule will ultimately prove more productive.

Staying on track
Once you've got your job search routine set, you should write it down and review your daily goals. Otherwise, it's far too easy to drift. Review your written plan often to see how your discipline is holding up. Then do whatever necessary to blot out distractions and keep with it. If you've set up your job search routine effectively, you'll see steady, significant results relatively quickly. And that reinforces your discipline, creating a self-feeding success formula that is certain to yield great results.