Have you ever been in a situation where you have too much on your plate, and not enough time to complete all of it? If this situation sounds familiar to you, know you are not alone. Time management is a common struggle for people in many facets of life — but for those on the search for a new job, managing your time is especially important to stay on the track towards success.
However, it can be difficult to find the right way to be productive and manage your time. For example, an outgoing salesperson likely has a different time management strategy than an introverted data analyst. No matter your learning style, it’s important to take your personality into account when thinking about the best time management strategy for you. Just like how two people with very different personality types likely manage their time differently, it’s likely that you don’t have the same time management strategy as all of your friends and family.
Below, we discuss how to find the best time management strategy for your personality type.
For example, a more extroverted person might benefit from using the Eat That Frog technique, in which you complete the least liked tasks at the beginning of your day. Once these are over, you are left with the tasks you enjoy most to finish off your day. This time management strategy is great for people who maybe aren’t the most disciplined, since it can help fight off procrastinating on the tasks you aren’t as excited to complete and ensures that, when you hit that end of the day slump, you are motivated by the thought of working on the things you like.
When searching for a job, the Eat That Frog technique can be used by starting with whatever you enjoy the least — perhaps, writing cover letters for each of your applications. Then, you finish off doing what is most enjoyable for you, like reaching out to people from the company for informational interviews.
If you are more introverted and organized, consider trying out the Eisenhower principle. With this time management strategy, you group your to-do list into four categories: important, urgent, not urgent, and not important. While organized people more likely already create to-do lists, this is a great way to segment your schedule even further into a clear hierarchy of priorities. While some people will look at to-do lists and tackle in whatever order seems ideal at the moment, the Eisenhower principle can help you create a concrete plan of action to seize the day ahead of you.
This technique is great during the job search process for prioritizing tasks. For example, if you are in the interview stage with a company, the tasks they assign you are likely important and urgent since you want to start off on the right foot.
For example, those who consider themselves a person who prioritizes helping others (a “contributor” personality type), it’s common to struggle to stay focused because you are willing to drop everything to help someone else. While being a contributor is a great quality to have in a team situation, it can cause some delays in your own schedule since you are constantly starting and stopping what you are doing. For this personality type, the task-batch method is a great approach to try out. With the task-batch method, you group similar tasks together to complete throughout the day to avoid the trap of multitasking—where you feel so stressed but manage to get so little done.
In terms of a job search, this can be applied by grouping tasks like creating your resume and searching for potential jobs together, then later moving to putting together your applications and sending out emails to hiring managers.
If you aren’t sure of your personality type, common tests like the Myers-Briggs is a great way to learn about yourself to determine your strengths, weaknesses, and how you work. No matter if you are in the stage of just starting to put applications together or are about to cross the finish line to a new career, managing your time can help put you on the road to success for your whole career.
Author bio:
Michaela Wong is a content creator who helps Resume Now create insightful career development articles. She is a graduate of San Diego State University with a background in digital marketing. In her free time, she enjoys reading, making food, and exploring her home state, California, with her corgi.
