Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Time-boxing and interactions

I'm following the advice of several people. That advice is: limit time spent on job-search activities (that is, don't let it take over my entire day) and get out and meet people. I think these are both good ideas, and to some extent complementary.

It is all too easy to spend the entire day looking at job boards, adjusting my resume, and updating the social network sites (such as LinkedIn). But I can do only so much in a given day before the tasks become trivial: re-scanning the same job board to see if something new has arrived, or pressing the refresh button to see if someone has accepted an invitation to join my network. Some work is necessary, but it should be *effective* work.

Getting out and going among people is also important. Sitting at home at the computer and phone does not keep my interpersonal skills fresh. Interaction with other people does. They don't have to be job search meetings or "network" meetings - they can be any interaction from a discussion with a friend to a conversation with the pharmacist. They can be long and cover many topics or short and only one topic. There is probably something wired into our brains that requires us to interact with other people. (And there is probably room for several doctoral theses on this subject.)

Yesterday I responded to an ad on craigslist, today I had a brief conversation with the recruiter for the position. It seems a decent match, and the position is closer than last week's, which is good. It also seems within the "transit circle", which is also good.

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