So I’ve been working through some of the little courses from the ultimate library for business and personal development bundle that I bought through e-courses4you. So far I’ve gone through their organizational skills, goal setting & getting things done, and the job search skills courses. Things that I’ve learned from these courses:

I’ve learned that I truly need to get better at organization—namely getting rid of a lot of stuff from my bedroom so it doesn’t look like a mini tornado has gone through. I’ve read enough over the past couple of months to know that clutter can also ramp up one’s anxiety issues (which I know for a fact I have several), and also can make it hard to get anything done when you’re trying to work in a room that is basically screaming at you to straighten things up.

I’d been doing good for awhile at trying to get things par down and making sure that boxes weren’t overrunning the room, but know there are the little things over running the room like clothes that aren’t put away, my crafts that are here and there, and my desk/dresser that looks like an F5 tornado touched down on it (remember my 101+ goal list??). I managed to straighten it up a while back, and actually kept it that way for a while, but now it looks like the F5 tornado came through—so I need to straighten it up again this week. Plus I just need to organize my clothes and figure out a better system for them than what I have. Also I need to just start cleaning…………..

I also have to figure out a schedule/planner that will actually work for me. I’ve tried the bullet (and normal) journal approach. But that only seems to work for things that I know I can get done, and truthfully aren’t very high on the priority/goal list of moving things forward. I’ve tried using google calendar—but that doesn’t seem to work, since I never know exactly what I’m going to be having to do during the day at work (it is hard to plan your day/week when you have no idea how your day is going to be going until about 9 or 9:30 that morning). I’m thinking potentially of just going back and writing things down in a notebook as a massively long to-do list that I can continuously check things off of during the week.

When it comes to job searching, I’m still trying to figure out which direction I want to go in (either R&D, health economics, or possibly an analyst position), and if I do decide R&D—decide which industry sector & companies I want to look into. As I’m doing that I also know that I need to be adding value to my network, so that I can work my way up asking for informational interviews at some point. I’ve also realized that I’m going to have to either suck it up and stay in my comfort zone (research) or figure out how to step out of it with one of the other two positions (or potential third). My main concern/fear is that I could be making a poor choice and then either moving back home or scrambling to find a another position/job if the one I took doesn’t work out. I know that in industry that usually isn’t the case—if you aren’t a fit you usually aren’t hired (companies don’t like it when things start getting out of whack [i.e. teams not working well for one reason or another]). But there it is—one of my main fears/holdback on the whole job search right now.

One thing I’m trying to figure out is if there are any type of conferences (health, business, or whatever) that I may want to attend (hoping that the registration fee isn’t outrageous) to try networking at a “blue” event and see how that goes.

I’m also going to keep going through the other courses that I’ve bought (which includes the web design and programming courses), and start trying to figure out the best methods for getting organized, setting my goals, job searching, and just trying to keep my sanity during these trying times.