Time Blocking Like a Salesperson to Get Your Next Job

It’s 9 AM in the morning and you’ve finally rolled out of bed after hitting snooze about 10 times.

You spend way too much time in the shower with about 5-10 different ideas of what to do with your day going through your head.

After 2 cups of coffee, you finally sit down at your desk and do…nothing.

Sound familiar?

Good. You’re just one of the many people entering the anxiety death spiral that is job searching without a purpose.

Chances are high you’re going to finish your day, week, and month feeling like you’ve gotten nowhere with nothing to show for it.

There is good news though, there are only a few tweaks required for you to change the way you go about your days and it all revolves around 1 thing.

TIME BLOCKING.

In this article, you’re going to learn how to build your day around what matters most to you like a top producing sales person does every day.

Step 1) Figure Out What Really Matters to You

If you read our last article about tackling the job search, it’s all about prioritization which requires you to understand what you care about.

In the sales world, these are called the revenue generating activities (things that make you money when you do them).

For the job search world, consider these the key activities you’ll be focusing your time on the most to find your next career.

Some of these key activities include:

• Researching companies you WANT to work at

• Cold outreach (sales for reaching out to people you don’t know yet)

• Preparing for interviews

• Following up with interviewers and reaching out to people already doing what you want to do

Take a minute to write down the 3-5 most important activities that you should be doing in your day and get ready to start building out your calendar with Step 2.

Step 2) Build Your Day Around Your Top Priorities

Now that you have your list of key activities freshly written down, it’s time to open up your calendar.

This can be a physical calendar, Google calendar, phone calendar, or any other medium of how you track your time, but make sure there’s plenty of room to write.

Once you have your calendar open, I want you to create a nice…fat…2 hour block of time and title that block Top Priorities.

When you click into that block, create a list of the 3-5 things that you want to finish most in your day and protect that block with your life.

This is where a lot of people get sidetracked. They don’t respect their priorities and schedule things over their most important time block.

PROTECT THAT BLOCK WITH YOUR LIFE (I may even say this a 3rd time later).

Below is an example of what my top priority time block looks like for Sales Tools 4 You.

As you can see:

• It’s the first thing I do in the morning

• The description has everything I need including links to what I’m working on

• I have many reminders so I don’t forget this is a priority

Now that you have your most important activities of the day blocked out that are going to drive you to your goal of getting a job, it’s time to fill out the rest.

Step 3) Make Your Calendar Your Best Friend

This is where things get fun.

You officially have gotten yourself out of the anxiety death spiral by knowing exactly what you need to do as your top priority for each day.

Now it’s time to fill in the rest of your calendar with other key activities that will help you drive towards your other goals.

These can be health, wealth, spiritual, or any other things that will bring you joy.

If you’re worried that having your calendar full every day is going to give you no wiggle room in life, I highly suggest reading Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink.

A key learning from Jocko is that having a full calendar doesn’t mean scheduling your life away.

It means that you have a laser focus on what really matters to you and you own your success.

What greater freedom is there than owning your day and filling it with what you want?

I’ll let you ponder on that while we tackle the summary.

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So what did we learn in our quest to get ourselves a mile away from waking up with no idea what to do for our job search?

Step 1) Figure Out What Really Matters to You

• Write down the 3-5 activities that are most important to securing a job

Step 2) Build Your Day Around Your Top Priorities

• Schedule at least 2 hours to tackle your biggest priorities and PROTECT THAT TIME

• Make sure to be very detailed in your time block so you know exactly what to do that day

Step 3) Make Your Calendar Your Best Friend

• Time blocking doesn’t just have to be for your biggest priority, it can help with all aspects of life

• Scheduling activities that drive you towards your goals isn’t limiting…it’s the ultimate freedom

Let’s get it.