Habit building can help reduce the noise and stress of transitions and growth
Looking for a new job, times of transition - any sort of change requires focus. That takes energy, which can be frankly exhausting. Habits help keep us healthy, focused, and effective.
To have the best success, it's important to understand how we work as humans and recognize our limits.
Here are some things that have helped me and I mix and match them depending on need. If you want a more bespoke way to handle your own approach, we can talk through it. Happy to be of help.
What are your good habits? What are you bad habits? What triggers either one?
Understand the Science of Habits
Habit Loop: Every habit consists of:
Cue: Triggers the habit (e.g., seeing your laptop, or putting your keys inside your running shoes).
Routine: The action (e.g., applying for jobs, or going out for a walk or run).
Reward: The benefit (e.g., satisfaction of progress, being done with a run).
Start small and focus on consistency rather than perfection. 'Some' is better than 'none' so just the action of starting tricks the brain. If you started small, congratulate yourself.
Focusing on one or a few small habits at once makes them stick easier. Trying to reformat your entire existence overnight? Not so much. If you have, I wanna hear that story.
Understand your brain when it's in focus mode
Humans have about 90 minutes of time to learn a skill before their brain says 'nope', so if you want to push, don't go past 90 minutes at a go with anything you are learning, or even hard focusing on. Take breaks. Sometimes breaks are where all the ideas come in.
I tend to default to closer to 25 minutes or so because I tested out ways that work for me. Personally 90 minutes all the time for everything is too much, but sometimes it does work for me quite well. Test things out, take mental or physical notes on what works best for you.
Habit Stacking
Habit stacking is coupling one habit with another. Like if you know you are going for a run in the mornings and put the recycling next to your shoes to take it out. You knock out one thing with another. So, let’s say you got really good at combing for jobs, what is a habit you can stack on that with?
Some ideas around habit stacking when it comes to looking for jobs or researching your industry to keep in tune:
When you see a role or company that interests you:
Check out if you know anyone connected there. If you do, message them right away. The faster you message someone when you are thinking about it the more likely you are to do it.
Maybe follow someone from that company that’s in your same skill or role type so you can see if they have any insights they share about the company.
Sleuth on the company and follow their news feed so you have access to what’s happening as time goes on.
Find a competitor and follow them as well.
All of the things above you can do in less than a few minutes, which is the perfect habit stacking behavior. You’ll have it over with, and feel a boost of accomplishment. You’ll be working quickly and seamlessly toward building an understanding of your industry or interest, building your network, and growing your reach. All with near minimal effort.
Keystone Habits
Keystone habits are ones that start a trigger of other habits. Such as running. Sometimes when people exercise more, they tend to shuffle their schedule to be rested for the exercise, eat better to perform better, etc. They build better habits based on that first one they started.
Setting up a habit to connect with someone in your network on a regular basis could become a keystone habit. Perhaps you think of someone, for whatever reason, and you say ‘hey thought of you’. If you start making a habit of this, over time it can bring an array of people your direction simply because you took a minute to acknowledge them. I’ve gotten jobs this way, reconnected with people from a decade ago to open up business opportunities, and lifted someone’s spirits who I didn’t realize truly needed it.
A keystone habit like this could trigger you to build other habits like building a mini-community of support in your industry, or having a better mental database to connect people with similar interests.
The interesting thing about keystone habits is you never know they will be one when you start. So the more you build habits that make sense to you and stick to them, over time you’ll start to form habits that really fit your goals as a human.
Identify Key Habits for Job Seeking
It’s really, really hard when looking for a job to know where to begin, so a lot of times I suggest to those I coach that they build up as soon as they start looking some small habits that work for them, see how it feels, and pivot as needed. But do what works, not what overwhelms.
These are some ideas I’ve suggested:
Daily Job Search: Spend 30–60 minutes researching job openings and how they fit to your skills and background.
Networking: Reach out to one new contact or follow up with a connection daily. Most of your time should be spent doing the networking, reaching out to people, researching, etc. so this might be elevated when you are first in it. The more you build this habit the easier it becomes day-to-day. Consider if you did this Monday through Friday for three months - you'd have reached out to about 60 people.
Skill Development: Dedicate 20 minutes a day to learning or improving a skill. Consider if you did this Monday through Friday for three months - you'd have spent 20 hours on something.
Application Tracking: Log all applications and follow-ups in a tracker, you can use a number of tools for this. I recommend something like Teal, Airtable, Google Sheets. Whatever is easy and removes friction of updating.
Identify Key Habits for Continually Refining Your Career Story
Once you land a job or if you already have one, your habits will be different. Go from reactive to proactive career mindset. This is where you take control of your career story in iterative, approachable ways.
Understand the market: Apply for a job at least once a year. This helps you understand the market, you have a clear understanding to hire other candidates into your team. This is not ‘cheating’ if you want to stay in your job. This is a suggestion I got from someone who literally got it from their boss. Even if you are happy in your role, understanding outside of your company how things work is important. Your role might be evolving in ways you aren’t aware of. Understanding the market helps find those ‘hidden’ roles that are still being thought up.
Weekly Career Story Update: Spend a small amount of time per week to update what you’ve done during the week, your smile file (anytime someone has thanked you for work), review your career story. This will become helpful for promotions, quarterly or annual reviews, and to be able to have deeper detail if you’d like to build a case study. Also, a more iterative approach will make prepping for those meetings less stressful.
Networking: Continue to reach out to one new contact or followup with a connection, but you can reduce this to weekly if it’s easier. Habit stack it with your weekly career story update.
Skill Development: If you dedicate even 20 minutes a week to learning or improving, over the course of the year, skipping some weeks for vacations and holidays, that’s about 17 hours of learning.
Set Clear Goals
Define specific, actionable goals:
Example: "Apply to 5 jobs per week" or "Contact 3 hiring managers this month."
Use SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).
Start Small and Build Momentum
Begin with micro-habits:
Write one bullet point for your resume each day.
Spend 5 minutes updating LinkedIn. (see more about the 5 minute rule in the video below)
Write a draft of a networking email.
Once established, expand the habit (e.g., apply to one job per day).
Create an Environment for Success
Organize Your Space: Keep your resume, cover letter templates, and job tracker easily accessible.
Minimize Distractions: Turn off notifications and set boundaries during job-search times.
Visual Cues: Use sticky notes or a calendar to remind yourself of daily tasks.
Use Technology to Stay Consistent
Tools:
Job Boards: Set up alerts (LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, specialized job boards). Need job board suggestions, ask me. I'm putting together a library of them.
Task Managers: Use apps like Trello or Todoist to track goals.
Time Management System:
Suggested: Pomodoro Timer: Break work into focused intervals (I use 25 minutes of effort, 5-minute breaks which is the standard).
Celebrate Small Wins
Acknowledge milestones:
Sent a great application? Treat yourself to something small.
Finished updating your LinkedIn? Take a break or reward yourself.
Need a friend to cheer you on? I'm here for it. Let me know. I'd love to support you.
Overcome Roadblocks
Combat Procrastination: I use this absolutely for things I don't want to do, like household tasks.
Break large tasks into small, actionable steps.
Set a timer for just 5 minutes to start. It's really amazing what you can get done in 5 minutes.
Handle Rejections:
Use them as learning opportunities. Reflect on feedback and improve.
Talk to friends and family, make sure to be open about your feelings.
Find Accountability
Share goals with a friend, family member, or mentor.
Join a job-search group to stay motivated and exchange tips.
Consider working with a career coach for personalized guidance.
Review and Refine
Weekly Review:
Assess what habits worked and what didn’t.
Adjust goals and strategies as needed.
Keep refining until the habits feel natural and productive.
By building small, consistent habits, you’ll stay motivated, organized, and steadily move toward your goals. None of this is easy, but hopefully, some of these ideas have sparked a way you can approach habit forming in a way that works for you. Because if it works for you at the start, it’ll work in the long term.
On this Career Coaching part of the Limitless Ledger Substack, I’ve put together a ton of notes and ways to approach your skills, career path, and how to see the value you bring to the world. I’m also available for 1:1 coaching.
If you share this Substack with 5 people you can get an hour of coaching for free ($100 value), or you can pay and book time here.
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