There was one question on my mind when I was coming back from China's most CHILLED OUT city…

How can I always feel like this?

Life isn't all about comparison but my experience of living in London, Dubai, HK is that they're full-on cities and when you live/work there, there's little room to properly switch off.

I visited Chengdu which is famed for being the polar opposite. It's the home of the Giant Pandas and maybe they take a leaf out of their book with the atmosphere.

Life is centered around the many teahouses, green spaces and public areas. Everyone was taking naps, chilling in the shade and playing cards, oblivious to emails and the LinkedIn algorithm. What a life.

The biggest compliment I can give it is that I touched down feeling a bit jaded and I came back feeling zen and keen to preserve my newfound mental state.

I was talking to another recruiter recently who was a bit nervous about a slower summer pipeline and I told them not to worry, that's normal. Advice I realise, I would NEVER be able to follow myself.

I'd be panicking and spending all-hours running up a hill trying to turn things around.

P.S. If your biggest frustration in the market is not being able to find the right roles, I have the fix…

I built a tool that pulls roles directly from company pages, before they ever hit LinkedIn and way before they get 1000 applicants.

I shared 100+ roles across the GCC & Asia that didn't make it to LinkedIn in our private Telegram

I'm sure this is a consequence of the traditional 9-5 slowly dying and creating a new world where the lines between work and self are so blurry they might as well not exist.

LinkedIn/Outlook/Whatsapp do not adhere to opening/closing times. This gets even more complicated when you work across timezones and a 5pm call in the UAE is a 9pm call in HK/SG.

So I thought long and hard. How can I steal from Chengdu and be more CHILLED?

THE RITUAL

Loathed to call this a productivity hack because that means the value is tied to work when actually I think it's a lifestyle improvement.

I'm a morning person and an early-riser. On days when I'm not in the gym I'll carve out a small block of time pre-work and go down to my local cafe.

I get a coffee, turn on DND for 30 mins and I use Claude voice feature (mobile app no laptops) to record a monster dialogue on what I need to achieve today, what I need help with and a checklist to measure progress.

Using the voice feature looks like you're on a phone call with earphones in.

The best bit is that you then get to put the phone down and enjoy the rest of your time in silence. When was the last time you enjoyed a coffee rather than it being a byproduct of the rest of your day?

Appreciate there might be some parents rolling their eyes at me on this but the point is it's a pretty nimble set-up.

You can do it in the car before going into work, on the treadmill and I've even done it in the sauna (weird looks from other people, wouldn't recommend).

Any time recouped from sitting in front of a laptop hammering out emails is a win in my book.

Let me know if you've come up with something better!

If you're fed up not hearing back I will review your LinkedIn profile today, on video.

This market is tough and you don't have to go through it alone. Right now you're one of 500 applicants for every role and the silence is becoming expensive.

I will tell you exactly what I tell the candidates I actually place. What's working this week. Why you're getting passed over and what to change to start getting interviews.

- Charlie