Albert Einstein defined insanity as “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting your results to change!”

I often use this quote during my training/speaking engagements to reinforce the fact that creating good habits and/or breaking bad habits is a very difficult thing to do.

In my last blog post, I touched on “attitude” and how it will either positively or negatively affect you, your day, and ultimately . . . your passion for recruiting!

My advice (provided to me by the experts in personal achievement, continuous improvement, etc.) was to read something educational/motivational for 15 minutes each morning before starting my day. In my “reading” session today (Brian Tracy’s – Million Dollar Habits), I was again reminded that you can’t just read/think/dream about something - - you NEED TO TAKE ACTION!

While reading something educational/motivational will help create a positive attitude for the day; it most likely will not result in improving your overall performance unless you have a written plan of action to implement the tools/techniques presented in the material!

For example, you are reading this article right now. I am assuming you are investing your time reading at this moment because you truly want to learn something that can improve your overall performance as a recruiter. But are you prepared to create a plan of action to implement the information you find useful?

Do you have a pad of paper to extract interesting/informative information that, if implemented, can improve your recruiting skills?

There is a TON of information available to us on becoming better recruiters - it can be overwhelming. ERE (ERE-daily, ERE Forum, The Fordyce Letter, CRL Journal) alone makes it pretty darn easy for all of us to locate educational materials for recruiters; it’s most likely all the information we will ever need!

But, like me, you may have found that:

• You read this information “on the fly” when you have a few minutes, or worse - when it pops up in your inbox (hence, interrupting your current work routine).
• You find some of the information informative, thought provoking and potentially useful!
• You look up from your pc and realize you need to move on with your day.
• You never CHANGE a darn thing to improve your performance!

With that said, if you truly want to “change” and become a better recruiter, I recommend the following (I am going to do this for the next three months – I will let you know how it goes):

1. Allocate a specific time each day to consume the information provided by ERE
2. • Set aside ½ hour each morning (make sure you create a meeting request for yourself!)
   • Create an Outlook side folder to collect/store the information and then set aside 1 hour on a week to review this information (I have set aside weekend time in my schedule. Maybe Fridays or another time works for you)
3. As you read/listen to the material, extract information that you believe will improve your performance and enter it into a notebook (your “IDEA’s for Change” notebook).
4. Allocate time (again - maybe each Friday for 1 hour or over the weekend) to review/organize/prioritize all the ideas/thoughts you picked up from your daily/weekly reading sessions.
5. Identify one (1) idea, tool or technique that you feel is most important and/or will positively impact your performance the most.
6. Develop a plan of action (create an activity you can perform, an action you can take) that you can implement into your daily “routine.”
   • Since there are 13 weeks to the quarter, I am going to post 1 piece of paper and add my new activity/action each week (so I will end up with 13 activities/actions I am going to implement during Q3).
   • Create the self-discipline to do this activity for at least 21 consecutive days (make sure you document this in your daily plan). Most experts agree it takes at lease 21 consecutive days to create a new habit and/or break a bad habit that is “medium-level” (quitting smoking for most people is considered, “high-level”).
7. Make a visual reminder of what you want to accomplish. Post it in a place where you can see it all day.
8. If you are part of a larger team, do this together (we are going to do this here at RA as a team)! At your weekly meeting (our team has a Perfect Week kickoff meeting every Monday morning), to discuss each person’s Activity/Action goal for the week (making your goals public also helps with the behavior modification process).

Please share your thoughts and comments on how you avoid going “insane”!