When’s Your Back-to-Work Date?
Curt Skene’s In2Win! Career Coaching Supplement.
Have you ever noticed how you can struggle to pay bills that have no due date? For most people it’s because it’s so easy to make other choices when there is no deadline attached. Success in your transition requires the same disciplined mindset as maintaining great credit. I’m always surprised by the number of executives who say they can’t believe how fast time flies.
A back-to-work date ends the surprise, forces you to create a schedule, manage your time, and set priorities so you can make tough career-based decisions. No one likes looking for work because it’s slow, daunting and often humbling. Having a back-to-work date helps to clarify how many people you need to contact, how many meetings you need to arrange and how much time you have for horsing around. Whatever back-to-work date you choose, make sure it is realistic, obtainable and creates the right level of urgency in your search.
As a guideline you should plan on being out one month for every ten thousand dollars you make. If possible, set your back-to-work date no later than three quarters of the way into your severance period. If you get back to work sooner, that’s great news! If need be you can always speed up the back-to-work process by doubling your career search activity.
To keep yourself inspired write your back-to-work-date where you will see it often and tell others, including yourself, that this is your date and you will hit it!
A clear back-to-work goal keeps daily decisions focused and prevents the search from drifting.
Why I Wrote This Page
Because most job searches fail from the same cause: there’s no real deadline. At work you had one built in, a launch date, a quarter-end, a review cycle. In transition, nothing forces the same urgency unless you create it yourself.
This is Parkinson’s Law in action: work expands to fill the time available for it. Give yourself six months with no fixed end point and it will somehow take six months, or longer, no matter how capable you are. Give yourself a real date and your brain starts making the trade-offs it needs to actually hit it.
A back-to-work date isn’t about pressuring yourself into anxiety. It’s about giving your search the same forcing function your job used to give you for free.
Action Steps
- Pick an actual calendar date, not a vague timeframe like “a few months.” Write it somewhere you’ll see it daily.
- Work backward from that date to set weekly targets, meetings booked, applications sent, calls made, so the deadline shapes your week, not just your mood.
- If you blow past the date, don’t abandon it. Set a new one immediately. A search with no deadline at all is worse than one you’ve had to reset.
In2Win! Afterthought
Curt’s current observations and updated guidance will be added here.
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