The pandemic has to be recorded in history as two momentous years for intense introspection. I know I have expanded my thought processing and I hope you have taken it as a growth opportunity for increasing your inward improvement.

Understood, a nonprofit “dedicated to helping those who learn and think differently thrive at home, in school and in life” published a single page that hangs on my wall “15 growth mindset questions” that I will spin into ways to rethink your LinkedIn presence.

14. What can you do to manage distractions?

I will start by saying that any visit to your LinkedIn profile is a distraction from the reader’s usual work. You want to be a meaningful and interesting distraction, not a speed bump that slows the pace and is to be avoided.

That said, you have one main goal on LinkedIn: to entice, engage, and enrapture the casual attention-deficit, and distracted reader will little time to waste to want to know more about you. You must make them read as far as you can get them to read, as you make your main points, and further reinforce them a couple of times, to ensure they actually get the whole picture of why you. Let’s unpack that long sentence:

  1. read as far as you can get them to read: starting with your headline, just like a newspaper, you need to capture their attention so they read for more information in your About section, then on into the rest of your profile to your Experience.
  2. make your main points: what aspects of why you are you expecting them to recognize you for your main attributes? Plan that and choose them wisely as these are the vertebrae of the backbone of why you.
  3. further reinforce them a couple of times: no one these days retains the most important aspects at the first reading, so use details, quotes, anecdotes, skills endorsements, and recommendations, in whole sentences as if you are explaining to the reader in person.

If you are initially considered a distraction, make their time spent appreciating your past and how it makes you who you are today, with a hint at your future, and to do you must plan, execute, refine, re-tweak, update, and keep reiterating your value proposition in your profile.

No one reads a newspaper article to the end unless they subconsciously consider doing so a worthwhile expenditure of time and brain cells.

Be that expenditure.