Good morning and happy holiday season! It's Rohan with your latest Career Supplement, your personal mentorship email that takes a few minutes to read, but contains stuff that will speed up your career by years. |
In today's Mentor's Corner, we're tackling something that happens to a lot of us at some point in our careers: hitting a rough patch. It's those moments where, no matter how hard you try, things just don't go as planned. And it feels like there's no sign of a turnaround. |
I'll break down strategies that have been effective for me and others when things get especially tough. They won't make challenges disappear overnight, but they're practical steps that can steer you back on course. |
By the way, a quick thank you to those who've been sharing my emails with their colleagues, clients and peers. These emails take a while to write, so it's fulfilling to see them reach more people. If you haven't, share my emails or share my posts on LinkedIn — I'd appreciate it. |
Estimated read time: 4 minutes 29 seconds |
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📈 Mentor's Corner Insights put together by me or coaches who usually charge $750+/hour and mentor senior execs. One practical lesson a week that will make a measurable impact on your career, delivered right to you — for $0. |
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Ever hit a rough patch? Here's how to overcome it |
Once upon a time there was a girl called Joanne. |
Joanne wanted to become a writer, but like many of us, went to university to study something more sensible. |
When she graduated, she had a string of jobs, none of which excited her. |
What did excite her? |
A weird idea for a book, which came to her on the train from Manchester to London. |
Back at the ranch, things weren't going so well. She'd broken up with her boyfriend, and without a lot of job prospects, she rolled the dice and went to Portugal to teach English. |
There, she started on her book, met a guy, got married, and had a child. |
But that didn't go as planned either. |
The marriage went south, so she went back to the UK with her daughter, and filed for divorce. |
So there she is… |
7 years after graduation, and in her own words, "the biggest failure" she knew. |
She had no job, no relationship and no money. The only way she could feed herself and her daughter was the ~£65 a week she got from unemployment benefits. And in a cruel twist of fate, her mum had just died. |
But, Joanne didn't give up. |
She kept plugging away at her book, and within the year, it was finished. |
She sent it to the 12 biggest book publishers in the UK, all of whom rejected it. |
But she kept going, and got her break: |
After an editor's daughter couldn't put the book down, he decided to take a chance and sent Joanne an advance of £1500. But he warned her, "there's no money in children's books." |
I guess that guy must be eating his hat right now… |
Because Joanne went on to become the first person to become a billionaire from writing. |
The book? |
Was "Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone". Joanne is J.K. Rowling. |
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Why am I telling you this? |
Because to reach a successful career, J.K Rowling had to weather an incredibly tough patch. It was so tough that I question if I'd have been able to come out of it the same way she did. |
In our careers, we're unfortunately going to face rough patches too: enduring a tough job search, getting rejected for promotions, working on projects that get defunded, or dealing with record inflation. |
And how we respond to them is everything. |
So in today's email, I wanted to share a few tips for how to do so, and come out the other side stronger. |
Here we go… |
🔂 The big picture: Ask the focusing question |
When times are tough, it's normal to feel like you're in a storm of problems. Everything feels urgent, yet nothing seems clear. |
So, try to get that clarity on what you need to do to make things better. That's where I like Gary Keller's focusing question, |
"What's the 1 thing I could do today / this week such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier?" |
For some, that might be building better professional relationships, or optimizing your LinkedIn profile. Stuff like those can open doors and bring you new opportunities. (P.S. if you want to optimize your LinkedIn profile, try this free tool) |
For others, your one thing might be self-care, like getting regular exercise. It might increase your energy and mental clarity, making all your other goals easier. |
The point is, simplify your goals down to the one most important thing. |
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| | | | …by the way, if you use LinkedIn, go to my profile and hit the 'Follow' button. I share a mix of practical career strategy and mid-week motivation — stuff that makes it easy to keep your career on track.
Topics coming up there: how to motivate/uplift a team, body language hacks and how to carry yourself in professional settings. See you there — feel free to connect and say hi! | alright, let's get back to my essay… |
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🕹️ Focus on what you can control |
Once you've identified your 1 thing, identify the daily actions you need to take that'll get you there. |
Say you want to land a new role. Your daily actions could be as simple as tailoring your resume, sending out two applications, or reaching out to one new person in your field. |
If your one big thing is to drive sales to your business, your daily action could be emailing 10 prospects. |
What you'll notice here is I've focused on the actions we can control, not the outcomes. A mistake we often make is we create actions like "get a new job this month" or "increase sales by 20%." While these are great goals, they're not direct actions. They depend on responses and decisions from others. |
So, switch it up. Instead of saying "get a job," say "send out five tailored job applications per week." Instead of "boost sales by 20%," try "reach out to 50 potential clients by month-end." These are actions fully in your hands — you can actively influence them. |
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My recommendation is to choose 2-3 small daily actions, that take no more than 2 hours to do every day. |
〰️ Build momentum |
Okay, so you've got your daily actions. Here's what you do next: stick to it every single day for 30 days. No exceptions. (That's why it's important your daily actions take no more than 2 hours). |
What we're doing is building momentum. |
In tough patches, everything can feel too hard. That's where your daily actions come in. They're your anchor. They keep you steady. |
The science here is interesting too. When you're going through a tough patch, your brain's in a negative spiral. Which means it's short on dopamine, the stuff that makes you feel good. And we need more of it to feel good and back to our usual selves. |
How does your brain release more dopamine? Through small wins and progress. If you get a small win — like completing your daily actions — every day for 30 days, your brain will notice the progress, release more dopamine and you'll feel better by the end of it. |
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P.S. To remind yourself of the momentum, start tracking your daily wins. In a sticky note or on your notes app, tally up the actions every day. |
🎲 It might not seem like it right now, but it'll turn around |
There are periods where we go through unlucky stretches. And sometimes they last longer than we want. |
Here's an example to visualize it. |
Think about flipping a coin. Heads is bad luck, tails is good luck. Sometimes, you might get heads ten times in a row. That's a lot of bad luck, but it's possible. This is what's happening in your stretch of bad luck. |
In those stretches of continuous heads, keep in mind that tails – the good times – are just as likely with every new flip. Life's random like that. The next flip could very well be the start of a better streak. |
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When I'm stuck in one of these 'harder' phases, I like to remind myself that the streak has to break eventually. Good fortune doesn't stay away forever. It might take a bit longer, but the odds are, things will turn around. |
That's a wrap. If that struck a chord, please do either one of the following: |
Forward this email to people who might need it, and tell them about my emails. It takes me ~20 hours researching and writing each of these coaching emails. Sharing it takes just 10 seconds and helps me get my thoughts out there. Leave a review on my emails, or say hi on LinkedIn! I'd love to know what part resonated most and how I can make the next one better.
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LinkedIn education sections: |
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🔎 Speed Up Your Job Search One actionable piece of advice to help you hack your job search. |
How many jobs should you apply for in 2024? |
Read the full article here. |
A statistic that's often passed around is 1 callback for every 50 applications. But we've found that this isn't accurate — you can 5x the number of callbacks by making a few tweaks to each application. |
🗣️ Avoid resume bombing. Quality over quantity. Avoid sending out applications to jobs you might not be qualified for at all. Make sure you apply to jobs in your niche — e.g. those related to your major, industry, skillset, or level of seniority. |
🎯 To make sure your resume is effective, upload your resume to this tool. It'll analyze each line on your resume and tell you how to improve each one, so you'll get past the resume screeners and hiring managers. |
🧐 Targeting your resume does not mean you have to rewrite your resume for every single job. Just tweak the skills section of your resume at the minimum — this resume targeting tool will help. And use this cover letter generator to create a unique cover letter per job application. |
📈 Use niche job sites: Avoid the Indeeds or Monsters of the world. Niche sites have less competition |
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If you're new here, let's get the intros out of the way. |
I'm Rohan. Six years ago, I found myself frustrated with the sea of misleading career advice online, so I started Resume Worded. The goal was simple: provide guidance that actually works. |
But resumes were only the tip of the iceberg. There was a lot of clichéd, generic career advice out there. So, I started this email series. Each week, I talk about real career strategy, informed not only by my experiences but by my conversations with industry leaders, senior coaches who train CEOs, and people with way more experience than I have. |
Every email you receive is written by me, not a ghostwriter. I'm here, on the other end, reading your replies. |
Until next time, |
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Rohan @ Resume Worded |
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What'd you think of today's edition? |
👍 I loved it. |
🤔 Pretty average, step it up. |
🤢 You didn't bring enough value. |
Here's a recent review — I appreciate you, Olcay! |
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P. S. To make sure your career never goes off the rails, don't miss my future emails. A simple way to make sure you get each email is: |
If you're using Gmail, hit the 3 dots at the top-right corner, and choose Move to -> Primary. Or drag this email to Primary if you're on your computer. If you're using Apple Mail, tap on our email address at the top of this email (next to "From:" on mobile) and click "Add to VIPs.".
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