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How to Be Productive in Your Job Search, with Mike Vardy

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Job hunting takes a lot of time, energy, and attention to detail. It’s a job in-and-of-itself!

You might start your day reading several job boards. Then you complete and send a job application.  Next you email requests for informational meetings. And that’s followed by writing thank you notes.  After all that? Perhaps you have a job interview. But your day isn’t over. Your evening may include a networking event, too.

How do you juggle all this activity while keeping your energy and enthusiasm high? Above all, are you using your time as best you can?

This week we’re talking with Mike Vardy, a productivity expert. He’ll share his best tips for how you can use your time to get the results you want.

This Week’s Guest

Mike Vardy is the founder of Productivityist and he is a former managing editor at Lifehack. Mike is also the author of several books and has contributed articles on productivity to 99you, Lifehacker, The Next Web, Success Magazine and The Huffington Post. Mike has spoken at New Media Expo, TEDx Victoria, and Creative Live.

Resources from this Episode

Transcript

Mac Prichard:

This is find your dream job, the podcast that helps you get hired at the career you want and make a difference in life. I’m Mac Prichard your host and publisher of Mac’s List. I’m joined my co-hosts, Ben Forstag, managing director of Mac’s List and Jenna Forstrom our community manager. This week we are talking about how to save time and energy by maximizing the productivity of your job search. Our show is brought to you by our book, Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond. To learn more about the new 2016 edition, visit maxslist.org/book and you can also special order the book now in more than six hundred Barnes and Noble stores across the country.

Job hunting takes a lot of time, energy and attention to detail. You might start your day reading several job boards. Then you complete and send a job application. Next you email request for informational meetings and that’s followed by writing thank you notes. After all that, perhaps you have a job interview. Your day isn’t over yet, your evening may include a networking event too. How do you juggle all this activity while keeping your energy and enthusiasm high? Above all, are you using your time as well as you could? This week we are talking with Mark Vardy, a productivity expert. He’ll share his best tips for how you can use your time to get the results you want.

Want to know where your time is going? Ben has an app that knows. A resource that tells you how much of your day you maybe spending on Facebook and other websites. As we record the show it’s commencement season. One of our listeners wonders if she should take an internship after earning a college degree. Jenna has the answer. Let’s turn to the Mac’s List team. I’m curious, Jenna, Ben, what’s your favorite productivity hack for job hunters or one that maybe you each used when you’ve been looking for work?

Ben Forstag:

I’ve got a simple one, that’s just, keep a spreadsheet of all the jobs you applied for. The company name, the job title, the contact, the day you applied, notes about that job. Because you think you are going to track of everything in Gmail or Hotmail or whatever your email client is. Everything gets mixed up pretty quickly. It’s nice to have one place where you can keep track of things, especially if there is like critical dates that are outlined in the job description. It gives you a reference point on when to go back and check in with the employer.

Mac Prichard:

How about you Jenna?

Jenna Forstrom:

My productivity tip would be to use the timer on your phone. When I was job hunting I made a mental commitment that Monday through Friday I would spend an hour job hunting, an hour working on my house, like doing home improvement projects, an hour working out, an hour writing, because that was a skill I wanted to get better at. Then because I come from a faith background, an hour serving the community. I would just set my timer on my phone for an hour and I would look on job boards. I knew I was going to go to an information interview.

I would time that out and then I would just cross it out and that helped me stay sane, because I think you can totally end up, when you are job hunting down the rabbit hole of like three jobs boards deep and then you are applying for a junior level role and you are filling out an application and they are asking your GPA from high school and you are like, “Wait a second, I’m slightly above this.” It helps you just, as soon as the timer ended I was like, “I did my hour. That’s enough for today.” I can move onto going and working out for an hour or painting my bathroom or something. Some sort of projects. I always felt like I was accomplishing something and that helped keep my spirits up.

Mac Prichard:

What I like about that is every day you are doing a little bit and every day you are making progress not on one front but a number of different fronts.

Jenna Forstrom:

My house has never been clean even when I was unemployed.

Mac Prichard:

I too had a very clean house during my periods of unemployment and I also in pre-internet days was up to speed on all the state, local, and international news I could find in the newspaper. Ben, I’m a big fan of spreadsheets too. I know we are going to talk about to do list but to Jenna’s example, one thing I love about to do lists is being able to cross things off and feeling a sense of accomplishment when I do that. I find both to do lists and spreadsheets help me stay on task.

Ben Forstag:

Definitely.

Mac Prichard:

Let’s turn to Ben, who every week is out there exploring the internet on your behalf and he’s looking for podcast tools, websites blogs, things that can help you in your job search. Ben, what have you uncovered for us this week?

Ben Forstag:

This week I want to talk about an app that really speaks to something Jenna just talked about which is time management and how you are spending your time in your job search. I found this really cool app online, it’s called Rescue Time. Rescue Time is an app that you can install on your desktop and it passively tracks your behavior to help you understand your daily habits and to be more productive. Basically the app tracks how long you use certain websites and other applications. It let’s you set goals for how you use your time on the computer and sends you notifications when you are spending too much time doing a specific action. I’ll just say here, you decide how much too much time is and the computer is just kind of enforcing the rules you’ve set for yourself.

 Mac Prichard:

Ben I’m a job seeker. How is this going to help me manage my time?

Ben Forstag:

In a couple of ways. First, it helps you with thinking about how you are spending your time in your job search. We’ve talked a lot about the 80-20 rule, where you should be spending 80% of your time doing networking and getting out there and talking to people and only 20% of your time sitting on job boards and looking for jobs. In our conversations we know that a lot of job seekers flip that around. They are spending 80% of their time looking on job boards. I’ll be honest, that’s not a very fruitful approach to the job search. An app like Rescue Time can let you know when you are really spending too much time doing the least likely activities that are going to land you a job. Looking on job boards and things like that.

The other thing that I think this could help you with is, wasting time doing other internet activities out there. I’ll tell you my wife for example, she’s using a similar app to this and she just uses it to turn off Facebook for four hours a day. It’s because any time when she’s doing her job, she’s a writer, any time she reaches any roadblock, she’ll just go to Facebook and think, “I’ll come back to this writing task. Then you get sidetracked on goofing around on Facebook or looking at the news, or people.com.

Jenna Forstrom:

You go down the rabbit hole.

Ben Forstag:

You go down the rabbit hole. You can just kind of lock out those sites for a set amount of time to get that distraction away from you. For some people that’s a really important thing. Again, I think this is a really nice little app. It’s free. A basic version of Rescue Time, you can jut download any time. There is a premium version with some more features. That’s up to you to decide whether you need that functionality. I’d encourage you to check it, it’s at rescuetime.com.

Mac Prichard:

Great suggestion. I have to ask since you shared your wife Erin’s favorite rabbit hole Facebook. What’s yours Ben?

Ben Forstag:

There is a couple of baseball blogs that I go to pretty regularly. The blog itself is not the the problem, it’s the comment section where you can just kind of get dragged into debates and conversations that go on forever.

Mac Prichard:

How about you Jenna?

Jenna Forstrom:

Definitely go to your Buzzfeed princess quizzes. Today I took a castle one, can you identify this Disney princess castle? I almost scored 100%

Mac Prichard:

That’s one of your secret superpowers. For me it’s Instagram and The Turner Classic Movie page. I can spend a lot of time reading about Warner Brother stars of the 1930s, more than you want to know. Now it’s time actually to turn to you our listeners but before we do that. If you have a suggestion for Ben, please email him. His address is Ben@maxlist.org. we’d love to hear from you and we may use your idea in a future show. Jenna, what do you have in the Mac’s List mail bag this week?

Jenna Forstrom:

This week our question comes from Hanna Alkaend. I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. She says, “I have some great experience in my industry but I’m a graduating senior, how do I convince an employer that I’m worth a job and not an internship at their company? Should I apply for both positions, intern and job postings or just the job position?”

I think that’s a great question. I hear this a lot. Either people are graduating, students and they don’t have a lot of experience and they are told that they are not qualified or they are a couple of years, or more than a couple of years into their position and they are applying for jobs or reentering the workforce and they are told that they are overqualified. Either way I think these tips will help Hanna and other job seekers. I would say directly to Hannah, don’t apply for the internship because you don’t want it. Don’t waste your time, don’t waste their time and that helps eliminate that problem. If you are trying to convince an employer that you are qualified for the role, just talk about all your strengths.”

A couple of weeks ago we interviewed Susan Rich about headlines and just going through them being like, “I have four years of experience in marketing.” That counts for college time, you’ve been taking college classes. Talk about your strengths and really direct ways so that a job seeker cant really argue with it and then talk about your experiences and the success stories. That would be my tip. You guys have any tips?

Mac Prichard:

I agree with you Jenna. I think it’s always, if you are qualified for the permanent position, apply for it, aim high. You may get into the interview process and they might offer you a, ask you if were interested in other opportunities if that position has been filled. You should, I think go for the, if you are qualified for that job, that’s the one you should chase.

Ben Forstag:

I agree with that. I would definitely not apply for both because I think you are underselling your opportunity as an employee if you are also applying for internship. Hanna here says she’s got a lot of industry experience. I assume she’s done internships in the past or had some other work experience really focusing on that and pulling out the meaningful transferable experiences for the job that you are applying for would seem to the best solution there.

Mac Prichard:

Thank you Jenna and thank you Ben. If you have a question for Jenna please email her. Her email address is Jenna J-E-N-N-A@macslist.org. These segments with Jenna and Ben are sponsored by the 2016 edition of Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond. We’ve made our book even better. We’ve added new content this year and we are offering it in the formats that you want. For the first time ever, you can read Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond as a paperback or you can download it onto your Kindle Note or your iPad.

Whatever the format, our book gives you the tools and tips you need to get meaningful work, work that makes a difference. Find out for yourself, visit MacsList.org/book. Let’s turn to this week’s guest expert, Mike Vardy. Mike Vardy is the founder of Productivityist and he is a former managing editor at Lifehack. Mike is also the author of several books and has contributed articles on productivity to 99you, Lifehacker, The Next Web, Success Magazine and The Huffington Post. Mike has spoken at New Media Expo, Ted-X Victoria, South Bay, South West and Creative Live. He joins us from Victoria, British Colombia in Canada. Mike, thanks for coming on the show.

Mike Vardy:

Thanks for having me.

Mac Prichard:

It’s a pleasure to have you. Mike, a good job search has a lot of moving parts. They are daily to do lists, frequent appointments, lots of applications, written material and follow up. How can job seekers avoid getting overwhelmed?

Mike Vardy:

One of the things that they can is really do a strategy that I call theming your time. what it boils down to is rather than trying to tackle each kind of search as its own entity. Go by mode, work by mode. Figure out how you can batch your time so that if you are going to, let’s say for example updating your resume. You are going to do some online research or you are going to make a bunch of phone calls. Batch those times together rather than focusing on singular jobs as you go along.

I think that’s a big mistake people make because what happens is that the time and the energy that it takes to shift gears or multitask if people want to use that route, is that you end up losing some steam along the way. You aren’t getting to the state of flow. You don’t get into the state where you can do your best work on one particular area because you are jumping all over the place. It’d be kind of like going into a grocery store and shopping by your meal plan for day of the week instead of shopping by the different categories of the grocery store.

You would never shop like that. The way we tackle our work or a to do list and often things like jobs search is, we tend to do that shopping by day of the week thing. It doesn’t really work as effectively. I would suggest that people theme their time and block out certain times where they are going to focus on phone calls, focus on research, focus on updating their resume, focus on learning about a particular skill that they may want to increase. That kind of thing can really maximize the time that you have and also give you more focus on that particular skill or particular task that you want to accomplish.

Mac Prichard:

Look at themes and batch your time. Let’s talk about calendars and to do lists. A lot of people will start their day with a to do list. Why is that maybe not a good idea and the best way to organize your time Mike?

Mike Vardy:

The to do list is one part of the puzzle. I think a lot of people what they do is they either work exclusively by the calendar. They’ll block out their entire day and they’ll hyper-schedule themselves or they’ll work exclusively by their to do list and will only look at the to do list in a way that it basically is like a laundry list. Where  they just go down bit by bit by bit. The problem with just using a to do list, that’s a simple to do list is just one big long list, is that it’s not segmented properly. Again, you can’t leverage the idea of the different modes that you need to be in. If you are going to use a to do list, it’s only part of the equation. Look at your calendar first. Your calendar is kind of the guideline of the day. What do you have, do you have appointments, do you have job interviews, do you have obligations that fall aside of that, that you need to be at a specific place at a specific time?

Most of those things occur when you are either relying or are relied upon by someone else. If you and I are scheduled to talk at this point and time, if I showed up a half hour later, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. That would be something to go into calendar, whereas, preparing for this, would go on a to do list and then if I was preparing for an interview or preparing to go for a job interview for example. I would then have a mode say, like job prep would be the modality or reading or something like that.

Having a to do list is fine but you need to have it as part of the puzzle, part of the equation and it needs to be made better. It needs to be segmented either by, and you could use several different things to separate it but I like to use what I call mode based work to separate it. There are five categories of modes that I discuss. There is theme based mode which I touched on a little bit earlier, then there is resource based mode. Do you need to be in Microsoft Word to do this? That’s a resource. Do you need to talk to a certain person? That person is a resource. Do you need to be in email? Email is a resource.

Activity based mode. Things like writing, reading, anything ending in ing. There is energy based mode. Are you feeling high energy or low energy? Maybe you are sick. If you are not feeling 100%, you are going to want to do low energy tasks. If you are a morning person and it’s early in the day, you want to tackle those high energy task first, maybe sort your to do list by high energy first and then do your low energy tasks later in the day. If you are like me, more of an nighter, you’ll flip that around.

The time based modes. If you got time between two job interviews or between two particular obligations. Instead of trying to look through, and scan through your to do list on its own, give each of those tasks a time allotment. I suggest maybe three time allotments. I normally go with five minutes, fifteen minutes and thirty minutes. That way if you have, let’s say you have a half hour between interviews, you could say, “I have a half hour. Let me look at how many five minute tasks I can complete during that time period. It just allows you to look at your to do list through a fresh set of eyes and you are not going to be as overwhelmed by all those things on your list because you are segmenting them out and giving yourself a better chance to complete them.

Mac Prichard:

It’s a great approach. How can you make that approach, five different things, juggling a calendar and a to do list? How can do you do that in as a simple way as possible in doing this work Mike?

Mike Vardy:

The calendar is the starting point. The calendar, you’ve been using a calendar whether it’s electronic calendar or a paper calendar. Those things are, they are already ingrained with us. It’s just how we use them, what intent we want to use them with. When I ask people or suggest that people use a calendar, I suggest they use it for agreements they made with themselves or with others that will rely on time dependent obligations. For example, a doctor’s appointment, a job interview. Those things would appear on the calendar because they are commitments that you can’t move. That’s the thing you look at first. A to do list, the way I segment a to do list, and it doesn’t matter what tool you use, is I organize by mode, action, and then a project. I would write down on a sheet of paper the M for mode, which is M, at the top of the first column.

A is for action, that’s the main column and P is for project. I call that my daily map. Basically what happens is this, when you write down a to do list normally, you just write down the action. The A. What I’m suggesting at this point is that when you look at those actions, every action should have a mode. If you are going to email a prospective employer, the mode that you would attach to that might be email. It might be low energy. Those are the very subjective. The bottom line is that every action should get a mode. Then, some actions require a project. If you are working on a particular jobs, like to say if it’s the job search project, then that would be a large project you would put them under or maybe it’s a particular type of job search you are looking for and that could be the project.

It doesn’t have to be complicated, it just needs to be segmented in a way that makes sense to you. Most people don’t use all five categories of things because not all categories of things will work for everyone. I suggest that people start off with time based ones initially and maybe look at some of the other ones like energy based or resource based and use one of those as your modes as you go along, because then what you do is you group those tasks by mode and then you could see, “What task am I going to accomplish right now? Here are the five emails I need to send. Let me do all those emails? Here are the four low energy tasks that I can do right now, let me do those.”

That’s how I suggest you put it together. You could do that with an Excel spreadsheet. You could it with paper, with you could do it with any task management application or to do list application with its salt. Any of those can accomplish this and like I said it doesn’t have to be complicated. It just needs to be consistent.

Mac Prichard:

You are using tools like these that you’ve outlined. How can people celebrate either accomplishment or measure their progress as they go along?

Mike Vardy:

If they are making these tasks achievable through the use of mode based work and again theming their time as part of it. I like to use a digital task manager for the ability to see how long and how far your progress has been made across a longer period of time. Digital task managers are great for that. Tools like to do list, Asana, Trello. You can see progress when it comes to those tasks in a digital task manager. The other way is by journaling. I’m a big believer in journaling. In fact, I’ve been journaling for years and I used to work with people, back when I was working in the corporate world, as well as even with clients I’m working with today. Some of the highest success achievers journal, ever single day.

Again, doesn’t have to be complicated, doesn’t have to be an essay. It just needs to say, here is what happened today. Here is where I was, here is where I am now, and here is how i got here. Then planning for the day ahead. My journal entries are often one to two paragraphs long and some have been as short as a few sentences. It allows me to course collect and see the progress as I go, coupled with my digital task manager showing me how many tasks I’ve checked off or even at a paper list. You can see how many tasks you’ve gotten through. I think that journaling, that reflection, that review which is really a daily review in your journal, it really allows you to see where you’ve been, where you are going and keeps you on course as opposed to deviating too far off course, especially when you are trying to find a job. Because the worst thing you can do is stray too far off course when you are trying to really move forward and land that particular objective.

Mac Prichard:

Tell us a little more about journaling. Are there practical tips to for example recommend writing for just a limited amount of time every day, are there regular questions you encourage people to look at? Should they go back and review past entries on a regular basis?

Mike Vardy:

My biggest thing is to make sure that you journal at least … My biggest thing is to journal consistently as part of your morning and or evening routine. That’s a big thing. This is one of those things you can tuck on to your morning or evening routine. I know a lot of people who journal in the morning and that’s how they get their day started by visioning what’s going to happen. Then they journal again at the end of the day to say, “Here is what happened.” For me the biggest thing is to journal at the end of the day. Because that recaps your day. The kind of the questions you can ask is, kind of like the old Ben Franklin, “What good have I done today?” That kind of question.

You could also suggest, “How many tasks did I complete today?” You could review the to do list that you had and say, “Here are the tasks I completed.” Another thing you can do, and this is something I recommend especially for people once they start to have less things on their calendar is to look at their calendar and recount how those meetings went. How those discussions went, how those agreements went during the day. Then yes, I do recommend that you go back and review your journal entries. I actually do a regular review, I call it the rapid review and I do it every two weeks. It involves reading my journal entries before I actually go through any upcoming obligations and any upcoming tasks that I need to work on.

Then I further read my journal every quarter just to get a sense of how far I’ve come in that period of time. We often forget. We get so caught up in the day to day that we don’t take the time to celebrate how far we’ve come, whether it’s in the week, the months or even the year. At the end of every year, January, one of my big things I do in January is I read my journal for the entire year previous. It blows my mind. Some of the things that I’ve done or some of the thoughts that I’ve heard or even some of the things I’ve forgotten that happened. I think that that’s a really important part of the process because that way you can look back and again really move forward, consistently in the direction that you want to move in. Those are some of the things I would do. Again, the big thing is, to do it consistently.

Some people are going to want ask specific questions and the more specific you are, the more detailed your journal entry would be. Others can be just as simple as, what good did I do this day, how did this day treat me? I also recommend that people, when you are doing a journal entry, it shouldn’t just be about work. That’s not what we are here to do. Work is part of our lives but it’s not our entire lives. When I journal, I actually infuse personal stuff in there as well.

Another thing that I do is most journaling applications, for example Day One on Mac in iOs, Journey on Android and then even, you could use a tool like Evernote. I take a picture to accompany the journal entry. That way if I’m stuck, I can at least look at the picture and then I can spur on some entry or some more material for the journal entry.

Mac Prichard:

Good tips. I think reflection is always powerful whether it’s about a job search or other goals and relationships in your life. We need to start wrapping up Mike. As you know, there is just no end of things that you can do when job hunting, the list could be infinite. Part of what we’ve talked about today is setting priorities and managing your time. How do you avoid burnout, what is your best advice about that?

Mike Vardy:

Burnout is tricky because we see a lot of things on our list and we feel that we have to do them all. I remember talking with David Alan when I was, a couple of years ago after I’d been in this game for a while. The quote that he said, that he’s mentioned that stuck with me is, you can do anything but you can’t do everything. I think that that’s something that’s really important. I know when I was working for Costco, I tried to be the Costco manager that was also trying to raise a family, that was trying to embark on an entrepreneurial career and it didn’t all work and I burned out quickly. I had to make some hard choices. The hard choice I made was leaving Costco, which as a stable job.

It was the right choice to make because a decade later now I’m doing what I get to do and I have the freedom that I have to make all these, to sit down and talk with you and help other people be more productive. I think one of the biggest things you can do to avoid burnout is to really get real with the tasks you have on your list and don’t try to achieve everything in one single day. Break down those tasks into manageable tasks. A lot of people will put things on their list like, write book. That’s a big task. That’s not a task …

Mac Prichard:

That is a big task.

Mike Vardy:

That’s not a task, that’s a project. Really look at the things you are writing down and making sure that they are broken down into something that’s manageable because when you do that you give yourself two things. You give yourself perspective to see, how much do I really have on my plate? Then secondly you get to see, is this something that’s really useful? Is this something that I really need to do? Do I need to do it myself, can I delegate it, can I defer it? Is this something I can drop off the plate all together? I think it’s important to get real and then really understand like disconnect and take a look at that to do list. Take a look at the tasks that are on your list and find out, are they too big, do they need to be broken down? Then secondly, can I move them to the next day or the next week or to someone else?

Because we are just trying to get through today most of the time. The problem is, today is so full that we end up moving all of today’s stuff to tomorrow and tomorrow never really comes. I would recommend that people look at their tasks list and really ask themselves, “Is this the smallest that this can be?” Is phoning somebody about a job interview is part, is a single task, it’s part of a much larger project. Driving a car is a project. Really, when you break it down. Going grocery shopping is a project. You don’t have to get that granular but you have to get granular enough that it personally will allow you to move forward and not feel overwhelmed by the process. That’s the key about productivity because even when productivity isn’t, even when business isn’t personal rather, product really is.

You need to make it yours and only you can decide how big a task is, versus how small it is. Really take a look at that because that will help you stay off of overwhelm and it will allow you to really move forward with purpose, intention and out of tension.

Mac Prichard:

I think that’s a perfect place to stop. Mike, tell us what’s coming up next for you.

Mike Vardy:

I’m working on a project for, my beyond productivity program is getting a big revamp. That’s what I’m working on right now. A lot of my stuff is happening at, if you go to Mikevardy.com/now, that’s my now page, it tells you what’s going on in my world in general. Or you can just go to my company website, productivityist.com and there is lots of cool stuff going on there. I’m speaking at a couple of events. I’m going to be speaking in Portland actually at The World Domination Summit in August. I’m looking forward to that as well.

Mac Prichard:

We’ll be sure to include links to all of those sites, including details about your August speaking engagement in Portland and other places in the show notes. I know people can also find you in addition to your website at your twitter page which is @MikeVardy, that’s Vardy with a V. We encourage people to connect with you. Mike, thanks so much for joining us on the show today.

Mike Vardy:

Thanks for having me. I really had a great time.

Mac Prichard:

We are back in the Mac’s List studio with Ben and Jenna. Now, tell me you two, what are some important points you heard Mike make, Ben?

Ben Forstag:

I really liked his point about organizing activities based on your energy level. Going from high energy to low energy because I think so many times, even in my job now, I end up doing the low energy things first thing in the morning and then I frankly run out of energy for the high energy things later on in the day. Thinking about it strategically ahead of time. There is a lot of value to that I think.

Mac Prichard:

You are definitely a morning person Ben.

Ben Forstag:

I am.

Mac Prichard:

For the benefit of our listeners. When I would stroll in here at 7:30 or 8:00, Ben is often already here. I know you do your best work in the morning.

Ben Forstag:

The coffee is already made by the time you come in.

Jenna Forstrom:

Which we appreciate, thank you.

Mac Prichard:

Yes, you do many things well including making a great cup of coffee. How about your Jenna?

Jenna Forstrom:

I liked both digital and analog suggestions for applications to use, which will be included in the show notes. I really just appreciated how he talked about how professionals and smart people journal. Because that’s something I’m working on personally. I’m not a journaler. I guess I’m reflective but not in a way like I think about journaling and I just think it’s this huge task to remember everything that you did throughout the day but I know it’s something a lot of successful people do. I’m trying to do it and we had a whole offline conversation about bullet journals which I’m trying to do and I love it so far. Just the active journaling and then I really liked his point about adding a photo because I think that’s something that’s really good especially since I already do that on Instagram on a regular basis. Just tying it to a journal to reflect on what happened that day and why it was great.

Mac Prichard:

I’m a big fan of journaling too and I’ve over the years, un-admittedly kept some kind of journal going back to great school days. They are all tucked away in a box and I do go back and look at them occasionally but not too often. Thank you all and thank you our listeners for joining us. If you like what you hear on the show, you can help us by leaving a review and a rating at iTunes. This helps others discover the show and lets us know how we can best serve your job needs. One of the reviews we received recently is from listener PDX Jenna. She writes, “I love this podcast because it offers actionable tips and guidance from the experts, tips that job seekers can use right away to find a meaningful and fulfilling position.”

Ben Forstag:

PDX Jenna, is this you?

Jenna Forstrom:

No. Honestly it’s not. I should write a review so you can read it out loud.

Mac Prichard:

You are welcome to.

Jenna Forstrom:

There is another Jenna, yeah.

Mac Prichard:

Thank you PDX Jenna for that review and thanks to the scores of others listeners who have left a review. Please take a moment to leave your own comments and rating. You could do so by visiting, www.maxslist.org/itunes. Thank you again for listening, we’ll be back next Wednesday with more tools and tips you can use to find your dream job.