If you are between jobs you may find yourself with an abundance of unstructured time on your hands. Trying to make the most out of your day will be frustrating if you don’t know how to effectively manage your time. Guest expert, Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt, shares his tips and processes for accomplishing large and small tasks, even if you are on the road.

Creating artificial constructs within your day can force you to complete assignments and is more effective than making a list. Lists are great for the grocery store but if you want to make sure harder tasks are tackled, create a schedule for yourself. One method to create an artificial construct is batching. Batching is restricting blocks of your time for one specific task. For example, batching emails for one hour means you will only read and respond to emails within hour you have blocked.

Distractions can kill productivity. Social media sites, phone calls, and unplanned interruptions are things we all get distracted by. To reduce the level of distractions during your work time Matt recommends job seekers:

• Create routines. Familiarity lowers the chance of interferences.
• Use the Self-Control app to block distracting websites during your work hours.
• Schedule projects in advance and then follow the daily schedule.
• Go to a coffee shop with wifi to get away from distractions when working from home.

Schedule a block of time to polish up your resume!

Matt Kepnes Bio

Matthew Kepnes runs the award winning budget travel site, Nomadic Matt, and wrote the New York Times bestseller, How to Travel the World on $50 a Day. After a trip to Thailand in 2005, Matt decided to quit his job, finish his MBA and head off into the world. His original trip was supposed to last a year. Over ten years later, he is still out roaming around and teaching others how to do the same.

Ben’s Job Search Resources:

Ben’s resource this week is a free online tool to save job seekers from the embarrassment of typos and grammatical errors. Grammarly can be used online or as a plugin and it identifies over 250 types of writing errors, many of which Microsoft Word doesn’t catch. Grammarly’s versatility allows it to function on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. when added as a plugin to the Chrome browser.

Jenna’s Find Your Dream Job Listener Question:

Ben, Jenna and Mac respond to Kelly G.’s question — “How do I market my soft skills?”

If you would like the team to answer a job-related question, email it to jenna@macslist.org or call her at 716-JOB-TALK. Or if you’ve found a job resource you think everyone should know about, send it to ben@macslist.org and tell him how it has helped you find your dream job.

These segments are sponsored by the 2016 edition of Hack the Hidden Job Market Course. The course launches November 1st — Lock in your early bird pricing now.

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Opening and closing music for Find Your Dream Job provided by Freddy Trujillo, www.freddytrujillo.com.

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