If you’ve ever used a garden hose, you have an intuitive understanding of a concept from fluid dynamics (and if you’re a fellow meteorologist reading this, you know what’s coming).
To get mud off your gardening trowel, successfully wash the car, or get revenge on your sibling, there’s a way to increase the power of your hose. (And yes, I see some of you smiling mischievously and nodding at your childhood memory).
The power is at the tip of your fingers…literally! It involves partially covering the mouth of the hose with your finger tip.
By covering part of the space where the water exits, you’re forcing the same amount of water to go through a smaller space. And with fluids (like water and the atmosphere), this means that the fluid moves faster.
On top of that, physics tells us that F=MA, the force an object can impart on something else is equal to it’s mass times how much it is accelerating.
You have focused the energy of the water, and you see the impact in the power of the spray to clean things (or quickly douse your little brother).
Focusing on Focus
Two career coaching clients I spoke with last month talked about feeling overwhelmed in their job search. Both had experience either working or studying in multiple fields and were struggling with where to even start their search. Too many choices can be debilitating.
Focus is one of my guiding words of the year and it’s really critical for me and my fellow Renaissance people, who have so many different ideas and things we’d like to do. If we truly want to have an impact, we need to focus our energy on a few things.
Note, that I don’t limit that to ONE thing. Renaissance people (aka multi-potentialite or boundary spanners) are at their best when they have multiple pots cooking and are learning in multiple spaces so that they can connect ideas from one space to another. That’s the cross pollinating I talk about in my business tagline (cross-pollinating impactful ideas across industries and disciplines).
But we can only do quality work if we limit where we’re expending our greatest energy. We need to focus on a few ideas at a time.
And that concept applies to all job seekers. It’s quality over quantity when it comes to job applications. There is no prize for submitting the most applications. You just need one yes (or if you’re a freelancer, you only need as many yes responses as you have the capacity to work with).
Put your time and energy into creating stronger, more targeted and personalized applications for fewer jobs because when you send the same old generic resume and cover letter, the person reading it can tell that you’re lacking passion for the position.
And it’s passion for a position, or at least interest in the work you’ll be doing, that will make you stand out from everyone else when it comes to the job you really want. Tell YOUR story and why YOU are the person their company or organization needs.
If you take time to focus, the impact of your effort will be greater.
Connect
If you need help focusing your energy, let’s chat. One of my other guiding words for the year is connect.
I am part of a group coaching program for freelance creatives and I was also part of a cohort of mid-career science communicators last year. I have seen the impact finding that community has done for me and my business.
And I’ve had many past LinkedIn Sprint participants tell me that one of the greatest unexpected things they took away from participating was new connections with fellow sprinters (search for #RenaissanceWomansSprint and comment/engage with past posts to help others).
I’m going to be scheduling LinkedIn Sprints throughout the year, so check out that page to see what’s coming up!
