Are You A Procrastinator?
Are You A Procrastinator?
ARE YOU A PROCRASTINATOR – IS IT AFFECTING YOUR CAREER?
Procrastination can have a significant impact on many aspects of our lives, including career plans. Have you found yourself putting off making decisions or reluctant to act related to your career?
It’s time to examine why you are procrastinating. Are you unsure about what you want to do or where you want to go in your career? Are you afraid of failure or making the wrong choice? Are you overwhelmed by the options available to you or the steps necessary to achieve your goals. Whatever the reason, it’s important to recognise that procrastination can hinder your progress and hold you back from reaching full potential in your career.
Also recognise that procrastination can be a major roadblock in how it affects you at work; it can damage your reputation and slow down career advancement as it gives the impression of being unreliable or unproductive so it’s important to identify and address procrastination tendencies (or habits!)
IS THIS YOU?
· You feel anxious or fearful about taking action, which leads to procrastination.
· You are a perfectionist and struggle to start or complete tasks due to concerns about not meeting your own high standards.
· You have low self-confidence and believe that you are not capable of completing the task, leading to procrastination.
· You fear being judged or criticised by others for your work, which causes you to procrastinate.
· You are afraid of failure or stepping out of your comfort zone and avoid taking action to prevent the possibility of not succeeding.
Take action today by simply asking yourself “Why am I procrastinating?” Identify the specific reasons you might be putting off certain tasks, such as liking the pressure of doing things last minute or fearing failure. Understanding these reasons will help you develop a plan to stop procrastinating.
Next, remind yourself of the reason for needing to take action.
Focus on the benefits of taking action and why it’s important to you. If you have a vision for the life you’re trying to create, tap into that vision and use it to overcome the feelings causing your procrastination.
Don’t let procrastination hold you back from achieving your goals – take action today!
Take action today by breaking bigger tasks into smaller tasks with clear deadlines. Have regular deadlines to keep you accountable and taking action. For instance, if you’re writing a proposal due in 7 days, set deadlines for writing each section over the next 3 days. Even if you still end up completing it at the last minute, breaking it down will help you meet deadlines without feeling overwhelmed or procrastinating!
Consciously surround yourself with other people who take action promptly. Evaluate the people you spend the most time with, are they procrastinators or action takers? Surrounding yourself with other action takers will help you take action more often, and make it the norm.
Don’t let procrastination hold you back, find a community of action takers and learn from the energy and results they produce, and the key top tip is contracting with someone to become your accountability partner.
THE VALUE OF ACCOUNTABILITY:
· Getting someone to hold you accountable is key to overcoming the habit
· Sharing goals is not enough, accountability is needed to stop procrastinating
· When asking someone to hold you accountable, they will check in with you regularly
· Accountability ensures that you will have to report your progress to someone else
· Choose someone who will check in on you and challenge you if you don’t complete your goals.
In summary not sharing your goals can result in never achieving them – it’s easy to keep pushing deadlines when you haven’t shared your goals with anyone. However, sharing your goals not only makes you accountable, it can also get them completed with the deadline!
How will you use your 15 minutes today, what is your goal?
Some ideas…………………..
1. CREATE A BOLD HEADLINE WITH A PROFESSIONAL PICTURE
Create a keyword rich headline banner for your profile (suggest using Canva) which has a short and impactful statement so that anyone opening your profile immediately knows what you offer, are skilled at and the job role you’re looking for. Essentially its a personal branding statement. +Have a professional headshot which engages with good eye contact looking forward.
2. MAKE YOURSELF DISCOVERABLE
Always keep your profile relevant and never copy and paste your CV into LinkedIn!
The last 2 most recent roles should have facts and detail: having your key positions filled out with great information is shown to be 12x more effective in being contacted.
Add your education details: but no dates to avoid bias. Also in the qualification section add your courses, qualifications and licenses if you hold any, so if someone is searching for a specific qualification they will find you.
Use all 50 of the available skills options – these are categorised, so choose from the key ones across Industry knowledge, Tools, technology, People and Interpersonal.
Struggling to choose which skills? Get nosey!… look at other people you know have a similar role and get inspiration from what they have included.
3. REVIEWS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
These are vital for visibiity – ask for them and also give them, they make a difference to the know, like trust factor.
4. BUILDING YOUR NETWORK
LinkedIn will intuitively make suggestions for connections based on how you are using the platform and existing connections – so regular housekeeping is essential to keeping this current.
Review the people you know and are connected with frequently – are they still relevant for you? If not, you can unfollow them without disconnecting – which means that you clear your newsfeed to be current.
For the people who are still relevant to you ensure you are commenting and engaging (an occasional like does not count!). Also if they are people that you want to know all their updates then click on the ‘bell’ on the top right of their profile page and choose that option.
If sending a DM asking to connect makes you cringe find a style that suits you – eg I will accept requests from people with obvious connections to me without a message. if I don’t know them I am wary of obvious ‘sales’ type approaches but value connecting with people who are thought leaders, high content delivery, connected to people or brands I am curious about. Basically add value to me and I can reciprocate.
Keep a list of all your connection requests and follow up – comment, reach out – build the relationship.
5. OPTIMISE YOUR ALUMNI
70% of roles are filled by connections – what a startling statistic!
A lot of these are via alumni, so ensure you are optimising these – using the education tab, click on your university and search names you remember – you will see connections at all levels, even as far as dates/sectors/companies and job titles for people there before and after you as well as during – a brilliant tool.
6. OPEN TO WORK
Add the open to work status to your profile as hiring managers and recruiters use this category to search within; linkedin states you are 40% more likely to be found.
N.B. You can select to set this as only visible to recruiters
7. THE INTERESTED FEATURE – NEW!
If you don’t want to use “open to work’ feature you can ‘Express an interest’ by:
– Go to the company LinkedIn page
-Head to the About section
– Scroll down to ‘Interested in working for us in the future’ and select I’m interested
Recruiters will then be able to see all the potential candidates who have expressed an interest in the previous 12 months
This is a new option and not all companies have the feature yet but it is gradually rolling out to those with active Linkedin Career page and recruiter contacts.
8. THE RECRUITER SPOTLIGHT: 5 KEY ELEMENTS
AI is of course infiltrating recruitment and as a result LI has developed AI for Recruiters which helps them know who are the most responsive to certain scenarios across various categories – these should make you think strategically about how you are optimising these opportunities!
LIKELY TO RESPOND
This option helps the Recruiter by highlighting candidates who are the most responsive to Recruiters.
OPEN TO OPPORTUNITIES
AI identifies and shows candidates who meet a specific criteria and have chosen to share career details and interests with recruiters. e.g. what roles/FT or PT / locations options, job titles….
CONNECTIONS
It tells the recruiter about 1st degree connections at specific companies
FOLLOWERS
Highlights people who are engaging with the brand/company – eg commenting. liking; the AI tracks any contact potential candidates have in any area, eg job posts, adverts etc. Also those ‘interested in the company
PREVIOUS APPLICANTS
Tracks those who have previously expressed an interest or applied to a role.This category are very responsive so are contacted early in a project.
