On New Year’s Eve within the past decade, I bet you told yourself it’s time to start exercising to drop those pesky holiday pounds. But, come the end of January, were the new running shoes still in the box, yearning to pound the pavement?
I recall living in Dallas and purchasing an annual membership at Gold’s Gym. I drove by every day on my way to work. And never stopped in. I was motivated to get in better physical shape, yet my desire waned. One day I planned to park the car in the parking lot and venture in …
“People procrastinate because their drive to delay is irrationally stronger than their drive to act,” according to Dr. Itamar Shatz. The most common procrastination reasons are fear of failure, feeling overwhelmed, fear of success, or lack of motivation.
I’ve noticed the same procrastination behavior occurs with tech executive clients at the crossroads of their careers.
For example, Greg*, a former work colleague from my days as a tech sales executive at CenturyLink, procrastinated for 2 years about leaving his company to pursue a new passion. Greg’s skillset is talking to C-levels because he’s engaging, customer-focused, and can talk sports all day long. He always hits his quota, which parlays into over $300,000 in annual compensation.
At the end of the year, like clockwork, Greg contacts me regarding changing jobs, especially now since the company’s stock price is under $2. I send him a career consulting proposal, and then nothing happens. Crickets.
A DePaul University in Chicago Psychology Professor reveals that everyone procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator. Based on research, which of the following procrastination subgroups do you fall into?
- mild to average (53%),
- severe (22%)
- primarily depressed (11%)
- well-adjusted (14%)
Somewhat of an oxymoron to be a well-adjusted procrastinator, but I digress.
For me, procrastination depends on the task at hand. Reflecting on my former career job search, I landed in the mild subcategory, especially when I heard the soul-crushing response, “Unfortunately, we’re going with another candidate.” Searching for a job is work, and it takes my clients, on average several months to succeed in obtaining their next role.
Making Yourself A Priority
Most of my clients drag their feet somewhere along the job search process. I am astounded at the number of people interested in advancing their career journeys and then procrastinating. My minimum condition for client engagements is that we can start working within 1-2 weeks. That’s the virtual handshake, but it’s not the reality.
Most executive clients fall into four major categories when it comes to prioritization.
- The Out-of-Towner: 15% of clients travel for work or vacation and don’t utilize that time to complete our consulting collaboration. For example, in Ashok’s case, the questionnaire remained unanswered, and his resume edits were put on hold even though he was on a 16-hour flight from the U.S. to India.
- The Work Perpetrator: 25% of clients prioritize their current workload over looking for a job. The irony is that they dislike what they are doing but focus more on that than a job search implementation strategy.
- The Ghost: 25% of clients contact me, agree to move forward, and then I never hear from them again. Sometimes, they even prepay my consulting fee 100% upfront; I call it procrastination money. Hey, I will take it to pay my business operating expenses.
- The Action Hero: 35% of clients meet with me, and we complete their initial project within ten business days. They prove that actions speak louder than words; the majority, like my client Amaira, land jobs within 1-4 months.
4 Steps to Quit Procrastinating
Since research shows we all procrastinate, creating a job search action plan is essential.
- Hold Yourself Accountable: When I put my intentions out in the Universe, my pride kicks in to achieve them. MIT and INSEAD behavioral researchers call this “precommitment,” the idea of setting personal deadlines. Based on my husband Pat’s encouragement, I blogged about writing a book in the Fall of 2020. Initially, Pat would ask me daily if I had started writing. Besides some high-level research, I had yet to commit fully. It changed when I began my new year in earnest with a 2021 publishing deadline. It worked.
- Break Things Down: In the book mentioned above, Clicks, Tricks, & Golden Handcuffs: 5-Point Roadmap for Tech Executives to Land Big-Impact Roles, the reader ventures through career search execution exercises; in turn, they compile a list of approximately 18 items to achieve success. It’s a checklist for moving forward in your job search.
- Challenge Yourself: Create SMART goals and refer to them weekly to challenge yourself to address timelines. For August, I challenged myself to edit a book chapter within two days. I achieved my goal of editing 20 chapters by documenting results on my word tracker Excel spreadsheet. It provided peace of mind and a sense of accomplishment for meeting my goals.
- Specific: What are you trying to do? Why are you trying to do this? When will you do what you need to do?
- Measurable: How will you measure what you are trying to do? Is it by the number of people you will contact or interviews you want to obtain?
- Assignable/Attainable: Do you have the background and contacts to reach your goal? If not, where is the gap, and how do you fix it?
- Realistic: Can you reach the goals you have created? If not, what do you need to undertake to do it?
- Timely: It is time for reverse engineering by working backward, beginning with your final job search objective and creating the outline for success.
- Identify an Incentive: When I was in sales, there was an annual incentive to go on the company’s Circle of Excellence trip for top quota-achieving producers. The year I left CenturyLink, I reached my sales quota pinnacle, so my husband joined me on a trip to stay at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida, for several days. We have fond memories of that trip, including sailing, cooking classes at Sur Le Table, and being treated in a top-notch fashion. Take a moment to identify an incentive to spur you on your job search, whether a trip with your family, home renovation, funding your child’s education, or buying that EV-charging car.
That’s a Wrap
Since Summer is officially here and you’re traveling on vacation, how about starting your job search instead of thumbing through Instagram or playing video games? Make that precommitment to yourself or tell your family that you’re ready to commit.
It’s time to overcome procrastination. I know you can do it!
* Names changed to protect client confidentiality
