The First Week of Looking for Work
For the first week of looking for work, before the routine exists. It gives the search office hours instead of the whole day, trades thirty applications for three good ones, keeps one sheet of what went where, and expects silence more often than a no.
Job Search · Work · Resilience · 9 items · once a week
The checklist
- Give it office hours, not all day — a search that fills the day empties the week.
- Send three good applications, not thirty — the scattergun costs you and lands nothing.
- Keep one sheet of what you sent and when — the follow-up is where half the replies come from.
- Rewrite the top third for each job — the rest of the page can stay as it is.
- Message one person a day you already know — most jobs move through people, not portals.
- Expect silence more often than a no — a feed of nothing is the normal texture of this.
- Put one thing in the week that is not the search — a search with no life around it stalls.
- Say the number you need out loud — knowing your floor makes the questions easier.
- Stop at a set time each day — the laptop closing is what makes tomorrow possible.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it once a week, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.