F@ck Motivation

Happy Saturday Everyone! 👋

(Read time 6 min 51 sec)

Welcome back!

Let’s land you a career-accelerating tech job faster and with less stress.

What do you get when you combine a short workweek and a nanny callout?

The return of The Manny!

My stats for the week:

• Diapers changed = 50

• Shirts spit up on = 3

• Stroller walks = 3

• Skinned knees operated on = 1

• Lunches made = 6

• Average steps running the kids around = 13,674

• Vegetables eaten by kids = 0

• Workouts = 0

• Work completed = Far less than I had planned

Sometimes nannies call out.

Sometimes your plan for the week is shattered before it even begins.

You can either understand that it’s a part of life and manage your reality.

Or be frustrated, angry, and completely derailed because everything didn’t go your way.

Which do you choose?

Now let’s get to the action…

Read on, my badass brothers and sisters, for:

• 👔 Why inspiration is a terrible way to manage your job hunt

• 📈 The May Monthly Who’s Raising, Who’s Hiring Report

  • 157 companies that raised $$ in May

  • 69 of them are hiring people like you

👔 F@ck Motivation

Job hunt consistency is a problem for almost everyone I speak with.

It was a big problem for me when I was on the hunt.

I have come to realize the reason why it’s so hard for people to stay consistent is because they’re relying on motivation.

I love motivation.

I love motivational speakers, motivational books, motivational posters, and I listen to motivating podcasts and audiobooks all the time.

So why do I say “Fuck Motivation” when it comes to your job hunt?

Well… the answer is quite simple.

Motivation is ever-changing.

It comes and goes.

In the job hunt game, your most powerful weapon is consistency, so relying on something as unreliable as motivation can be damaging in two ways.

It Kills Consistency

One day you listen to the founder of a target company speak about his vision for the future on a podcast, you feel the fire in your belly to get that dream job, and you blast through all your networking outreach, you craft value deliverables, and update and submit your resume.

The next day you tell yourself you were so productive that you can chill for a day.

The next day, your coffee isn’t the right temperature and doesn’t give you the jolt you normally get, so you take it easy.

You stub your toe the next morning and need to ice it, so you plop on the couch and catch up on your shows.

Before you know it, a week has passed, and you only took action on outreach to a single target company and a couple of networking connections.

You’re scratching your head, trying to figure out how to reignite that spark so you can make more progress.

It’s Exhausting

Relying on motivation is also exhausting.

Almost every job hunter I speak with relies on daily motivation to make progress.

Here’s what that looks like.

• You wake up in the morning and open your laptop.

• You start your day by heading to your favorite job board.

• You scroll through page after page as you look for roles that inspire you enough to apply.

• Once bored of that, you move to your email to see if you have any alerts from websites with new job postings.

• Maybe there are a couple of jobs you find interesting, and you start to work on applications for the role.

• By the time you get to thinking about how to strategically stand out, your brain is fried, and your energy is drained.

Does that sound like you?

Daily action based purely on what you can find at that moment.

Subsistence hunting.

This quick path to burnout leads most people to abandon their job hunt for days or weeks because they get tired of mindlessly searching.

You’re spending so much mental energy on trying to figure out what excites you enough to apply and where to find those roles that by the time you get to what really matters (crafting engaging outreach and creative value creation) you don’t have the necessary energy to do it well.

On and on the downward spiral goes.

So What’s The Alternative?

Motivation isn’t the answer to consistency.

It’s amazing to determine where you want to go and creating a strategy to get there.

But once you have a direction you’re moving towards you need to rely on something else entirely.

Execution

Craft your daily strategy and habits around execution not motivation.

Here are 5 ways to shift from a Motivation based job hunt to an Execution based job hunt to remain consistent and see massive results:

1) Plan your days and weeks before they start

It takes a significant amount of brain power to decide what you should be doing every morning and it causes you to lose countless productive hours.

Not knowing what you will do the next day as you lay your head on the pillow causes stress and can harm your energy level and sleep on the other side of the day.

So avoid that uncertainty entirely.

Instead, plan what you will do the day and week before.

This doesn’t need to be overly complicated.

Write out the top 2 things that, if completed, will make all other things easier.

Don’t create a massive to-do list.

Those are intimidating and lead to checking off the easiest tasks, while the highest leverage but more intensive tasks collect dust.

Instead, focus on the two things that, if completed, will make all other job hunt-related tasks easier.

I like to use a large desk calendar like this one, so I’m constantly looking at those top 2 things.

2) Create Calendar Time Blocks

Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

So if you don’t set any deadlines, you’ll find that what could take 30 minutes will take a day.

The easiest way to do that and to also create a repeatable executable process is by creating time blocks on your calendar.

I suggest blocking off everything that is important to you.

• When do you wake up? - Add a time block

• When do you work out? - Add a time block

• When do you spend time with family/friends? - Add a time block

• When do you have the most energy? - Add a time block for your most important daily task.

These time blocks remind us what is important, get us in a rhythm of predictable execution, and help time-gate tasks to allow for faster completion.

3) “Boring” Task Batching

Scrolling through job boards and thinking about what you’ll apply to each day is similar to a company basing its strategy on what customer support tickets come in each day.

Instead, batch the “boring” tasks into a single day so you can execute against the batched information for the rest of the week.

Here’s what that looks like:

• Set up an extended time block each week to create a list of 50 to 100 people from your existing network that you find interesting and would want to connect with.

• Set up an extended time block each week to create a list of 5 to 10 target companies that you find really interesting.

Look what you just did!

Now instead of mindlessly scrolling each day for inspiration, you have a list of targets to execute against for the remainder of the week or for multiple weeks.

Whenever you see an interesting company or person to network with… add them to the list.

4) Use Productivity Tools

A decent amount of your ability to remain consistent is the ease of completing your tasks.

So make the stuff that you hate doing, the boring, repetitive, mundane tasks, as easy as possible to execute.

What are some of those tasks and tools to help?

• Resume updates - ChatGPT

• Email outreach - Yesware

• Common text (email, LinkedIn link, templates) - aText

• Grammer and spelling editing - Grammarly

• Browser window adjustment - BetterSnapTool

Remove all brainpower from repetitive tasks by introducing tools.

5) Use Templates

Elite job hunters are doing lots of outreach and value creation.

But, elite job hunters don’t spend much time crafting each outreach piece.

So they’re sending the same generic message?

No.

They’re using tools to insert templates that create the general outreach structure and then use their brain and the pre-work they did in their batching exercise to input personalized details.

This is the secret to continuous, high-quality networking outreach.

Relationship building through networking is the cornerstone of the elite job hunt.

Execution Over Motivation

There’s an amazing quote in Rich Roll’s book Finding Ultra.

He finds himself constantly burning out during his ultramarathon training because he’s pushing too hard.

Then his trainer said this one thing that changed everything.

Your best chance at staying consistent and not burning out is to rely on your ability to execute a repeatable system versus manufacturing daily motivation.

Use the 5 tips above, and I promise you’ll burn out less, produce more, and ultimately be a happier and healthier job hunter.

At the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want?

I want to hear from you!

What are you struggling with?

What’s an area that you’re excited about and you want me to dig into?

What company or leader do you want to learn more about?

Email your question to [email protected] or idea, and you’ll likely find a complete breakdown in a future edition of the newsletter.

📈May Report: Who’s Raising? Who’s Hiring?

Click here to access the data for 157 companies that raised over $5.6 billion in May.

Many of them are actively hiring people just like YOU!

The ones that don’t have active postings are still great targets for networking outreach.

There you have it, a framework you can use to stay more consistent through execution instead of motivation.

Let’s become career champions together 🏆

Kyle

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

#1: Free Job Hunt Strategy Call: Request a free job hunt strategy call with me to get closer to landing your next career-accelerating tech role. Schedule a free call today!

#2: Want to get serious about accelerating your career in tech? Discover the small selective membership for ambitious professionals seeking a career-accelerating role in 90 days.

#3: Follow me on LinkedIn for more job hunt systems, productivity tools, and networking templates.

Share UpEmployment

The job hunt isn’t something you need to do alone.

In fact, if you surround yourself with other career champions, you’ll land your dream job quicker.

So share this newsletter with anyone you know that is currently looking for that next career-accelerating opportunity so you can win together!

Forward them this email or just copy and paste this link: https://upemployment.beehiiv.com/subscribe

See you again next week!