The 4Ps of Landing a Job

This past Friday I had a brief conversation at the community center pool with a regular I've met before. Matt is a bit older than me, clearly a better swimmer, and does something I've never seen anyone else at the pool do. He shows up with no workout plan, no smartwatch, no drills, and no equipment. He swims freestyle for an hour, takes a couple water breaks, and leaves. Every week. Same thing. While sharing a swim lane with him, inspired by him, I found myself thinking about what it actually takes to accomplish anything hard. And I landed on four things.

Process. Productivity. Patience. Persistence.

Process is the foundation. It's knowing what to do, in what order, with enough frequency that the work becomes automatic. Process removes the daily decision of where to start. It converts intention into motion. Of the four, this one matters most, because without it the other three have nothing to build from. Productivity without process is scattered effort. Patience without process is just waiting. Persistence without process is spinning. This is why the first thing I build with every client is a daily job search routine. Not a list of tips. A structured process they can execute every single day, regardless of how they feel about the job search that morning.

Productivity is the confidence that the process is actually working. It's the right effort, done the right way, creating traction even when you can't see it yet. This one is harder to measure in a job search than it is in a workout. You don't get a lap counter or a heart rate monitor. What you do get is feedback, if you know where to look for it. Response rates, conversations started, interviews scheduled. Those are your metrics. If the process isn't productive, doing it longer won't fix anything.

Patience is giving the process enough time to perform. The job search tests patience in a way that most other challenges don't, because most of what we see on social media is other people's wins. Patience requires you to hold to your own timeline and trust that the work you did today is compounding, even when nothing confirms it yet. The reward for patience is by definition not immediate. That's not a flaw in the process. That's the cost of doing something hard.

Persistence is what keeps the process going when patience runs thin. It's showing up and executing even when the last several days of effort have returned nothing visible. Patience is internal. Persistence is behavioral. You can feel patient and still not open your laptop. Persistence is the action. It's the proof that you still believe the process is worth running. Intensity matters, but without persistence, you're relying on luck to close the gap.

​ At the pool, Matt doesn't think about any of this. He just shows up and does what works. That's the goal with all four of these... to be so committed to the process that the decision to show up is already made.

As the week kicks off, I encourage you to reflect on where you stand with each of the 4Ps. How clear is your process? Is it productive? Do you need to be more patient or persistent?