Reimagine Your Job Search: Climate Careers Made Manageable
Turning his own painful job search experience into a breakthrough system, Cole Fitter created the S4 Method - a fresh take on structured routines for modern job seekers.
Unlike others in his field who focus on the “what to do” for landing the work, Cole tackles the real challenge: maintaining sanity during the search.
His approach transforms aimless LinkedIn scrolling and endless waiting into purposeful daily routines.
By merging time-blocking with mindfulness techniques, his system helps seekers celebrate small wins while moving steadily towards their goals.
Drawing wisdom from thought leaders like David Allen, he's crafted a framework that frees minds to create rather than store endless to-dos.
I caught up with Cole recently and asked him to share his S4 System in more detail for you to take a look at and pick the elements which might help you with the overwhelm and the loss of focus when it comes to the execution of your career transition plan
Here’s Cole on the process that helps his clients beat the burn out and overwhelm during the job search journey…
When you’re jobseeking, you have no structure. You can spend 10 hours on LinkedIn, close your laptop with a headache, and hit the hay not knowing whether you are closer to or further away from your goals.
I know this all too well because I experienced it. I sent resumes into the void, messaged CEOs and hiring managers on LinkedIn, and spent countless hours waiting for decisions that never came.
This is an excruciating way to run a job search. The good news, though, is that your job hunt doesn’t have to be this way.
Searching Intentionally
Imagine your ideal daily routine: your goals are mapped out, breaks are designed into your day, and your mind is free to create. This is a stark contrast to the endless turmoil and frustration of modern job-searching.
While I may not have found a way to land you your next gig, I can at least help you structure your days so that your search does not become a black hole of doom. Let’s get into it.
The S4 Method to Routine Design
When we talk about structuring your day, it is important to make sure everything is accounted for and that there is space for things to change. I have designed a method that takes both of these needs into account. I call it the S4 Method. It uses the best of time-blocking, note-taking, and planning.
The S4 Method has 4 steps and can be used to design days, weeks, and even months. Here are the 4 steps:
Spew — This is mostly concerned with getting it all out of your head and onto something where you know it’s safe and recorded
Slot — Take all the tasks that you’ve spewed out and slot them into your spaces during your week when you know you’ll have time to do them.
Start — This step is concerned with action. Pomodoro timers, various focus modes for mobile phones, and scheduled breaks rest are essential to Start
Success — This is where you savor what you’ve accomplished, cross things off, and get to feel good about your productivity.
Following this method allows your mind to freely create and do rather than overthink and spin its wheels. After all, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them” (David Allen, Getting Things Done). Said a different way, your mind should be treated as a computer, not a storage locker (Struthless on YouTube).
The S4 method also helps to rewire your brain to focus more on what you have done rather than what you have yet to do. Since our brains are like “Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones,” we need to be more intentional about savoring all the good work that we put in. As author and psychologist Rick Hanson states in his book Hardwiring Happiness, “By taking in the good for at least 10–20 seconds, you actively rewire your brain to focus on success and joy.”
It is important and easy to train your brain toward the positive. In the S4 framework, the Success step invites you to simply cross your task off, sit back, and relish in the enjoyment of being productive.
In addition to feeling good, this relishing can build momentum in your day. As Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it in The Power of Positive Thinking, “The more you celebrate your achievements, the more confidence and momentum you build for future successes.”
Let’s see the S4 Method in more detail.
How to Structure Your Day with the S4 Method
Spew — This is the brain dump part of the S4 method.
In Spew, you vomit out all your tasks for the week. Anything that could remotely be considered a task that you’re responsible for will go onto a paper. Use bullet points, a numbered list, or just scribbles. No one else is going to see this. As long as you can understand your Spew, you’re golden.
Tip: Although it’s not required for S4 to function, it is helpful to put a time estimate next to each task. It could be as simple as a squiggly line next to each item and a time, such as ~ 5 mins or ~1hr. This will help in the next step.
Slot—This is where you take your spewed tasks and find time to do them
The Slot step is like dragging and dropping your tasks from Spew to times in your week when you know you will have time to do them.
The simplest way to do this is to sketch your week out in columns and use the Y axis as time. Then you can add in the appointments, meetings, and other time-sensitive events in your week with an estimate of how long they will take.
Once your most important and known events are blocked out into your week, you will get a better picture of what days have what amount of free time. Then, with an estimate of each task’s time, you can slot each task into your days.
The order of tasks is not so important. What is important is to think about rhythm, flow, and which tasks tire you out more than others.
Lastly, remember to schedule rest!!! Make it as short as 5 minutes or as long as 2 hours, but please don’t ignore it. A 2014 study in Cognition by K. Zabelina and M. Robinson demonstrated that brief breaks during prolonged tasks can improve focus and creative problem-solving. So yes, rest is productive.
Start—The actual doing
There’s not much to this step. This step is all about action and doing. Whatever helps you get into a focus mode, do it.
Some “hacks” you can try are to put your phone behind your laptop so it’s out of view, put your devices on DoNotDisturb, and use Pomodoro timers.
If you aren’t familiar with Pomodoro timers, they are just different ways to break up an hour into work and rest segments. The standard is to work for 25 mins with 5 min breaks, but you can change the time however you want. I once heard of someone using a “reverse” Pomodoro timer for low motivation days, which is to work for 5 mins and take 25-minute breaks. Genius.
Success—Feeling good about your productivity
As mentioned above, it is almost inevitable that you will feel burnt out in the modern job-search.
To counteract this burning out, it is crucial to tend to your mind. The easiest way to do this while staying productive is to “take in the good.”
All you must do to reap the benefits of positive psychology is mindfully stay with the feeling of getting something done. Whether you use paper and cross something off or use a digital list and check something off, savor the dopamine rush.
If you’re familiar with meditation, you can think of it as a mini-meditation. Take a few breaths, feel how your body feels after completing a task, and return to your work.
Don’t let the phrase “rewiring your brain” confuse you. This whole process needn’t take longer than 1 minute. As long as you are focussing on positive sensations in your body and good thoughts in your mind, you’re doing it right.
Summary/Conclusion
The S4 Method gives structure to your job search so you can focus on progress, not just effort. By writing down tasks, time-blocking effectively, and celebrating small wins, you can stay motivated and avoid burnout. If you want to learn more about Routine Design or get personalized coaching, check out the links below.
If you want help implementing your own S4 plan check out Cole’s Website.
“Cole made me feel hopeful that I could actually accomplish my goals. I have a lot going on in my life right now, and it was so wonderful to sit down with someone who has such a great mind for synthesis and problem solving! ”
