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Alopochen said:

To progress towards having a job I have: tried various online courses; read books and websites about jobs; studied subjects in detail whilst I liked them. Currently I'm studying stock market investing. I got bored of every other job I looked into so I don't know what else I would do.

You'll find that a lot of jobs are boring, especially entry level jobs until you are given responsibility and are able to progress up the career ladder. You pretty much have to suck it up and do the boring jobs to get a shot at the not boring jobs (unless you're lucky enough to have a great aptitude in a profession that's short of labour), there are very few reasonably or well paid jobs that are genuinely enjoyable from the start, primarily because competition for them is high and so they will be looking for the candidate that demonstrates drive, ability, aptitude and dedication.

A lot of people will tell you to follow your heart, don't, follow your head. Plan out what you want from work, how much you want to be paid, what kind of hours and commute you will be ok with, what work you are capable of, see what options that gives you, then narrow that down further by looking at what employment prospects you have in those sectors. That will be things like required education, experience, skills, who you know who can give you a leg up etc. Once you've done that you'll have a final shortlist, see what jobs are available and apply for them all, then take it from there.

I would personally advise against applying for too many roles. Each application needs to be properly tailored and targeted - do not use a generic CV, re-write your CV each time to fit the description of the job you are applying for. 

I doubt I would entertain more than (say) 3 open applications at any one time, otherwise there's too much going on.

Not doing your research on the company you have applied to is also bad form. Make sure you know more about the company (and the likely problems they need you to solve) than the overwhelming majority of other candidates. 

It's fairly easy to tailor a CV and cover letter though, with a bit of online research you can easily get through 1-2 an hour. Limiting yourself to to only 3 open applications, when applications can stay open for weeks will mean that virtually any form of progress will ground to a halt.

Last time I had to actively apply for jobs was about 8 years ago (rather than looking in my spare time to see if there was anything better available) and I managed about 12 applications a day (six days a week), of those over the course of the week and a half I was applying I was offered 62 interviews off the back of those cover letters and CVs. I then chose the eight of them I really wanted to go for and had those eight interviews over 8 days, in the prep for those interviews I did a crib sheet on the company which I memorised before the interview.

With the ability to modify cover letters and CVs digitally and email them in seconds (as well as submitting your CV to an agency who will often tailor it for each role they apply for on your behalf), there's no reason a person couldn't complete 50+ applications over the course of a week.

It's fairly easy to tailor a CV and cover letter though, with a bit of online research you can easily get through 1-2 an hour. Limiting yourself to to only 3 open applications, when applications can stay open for weeks will mean that virtually any form of progress will ground to a halt.

Last time I had to actively apply for jobs was about 8 years ago (rather than looking in my spare time to see if there was anything better available) and I managed about 12 applications a day (six days a week), of those over the course of the week and a half I was applying I was offered 62 interviews off the back of those cover letters and CVs. I then chose the eight of them I really wanted to go for and had those eight interviews over 8 days, in the prep for those interviews I did a crib sheet on the company which I memorised before the interview.

With the ability to modify cover letters and CVs digitally and email them in seconds (as well as submitting your CV to an agency who will often tailor it for each role they apply for on your behalf), there's no reason a person couldn't complete 50+ applications over the course of a week.

WoW that is totally overwhelming to me, just reading it almost scrambled my brain. I can see your system and work in a similar way when I’m doing my job as a social worker. I guess I just need to accept that just now, I’m in burnout, because reading that freaked me out. It sounds exhausting. But I guess it is also a matter of how important it is to you to get a job. I’m not looking to work for anyone else but if I was, I think I’d follow this method. 

I tend to compartmentalise a lot, so open applications don't matter to me, once they are sent off they are then irrelevant until I hear back from them again. Cover letter and CV could be filed so I could see what was send to them, spreadsheet showed all applications, dates sent, who to etc. if I needed to refer back to things.

I tend to find as with all things, only have in processing the data that is immediately relative, everything else can be stored in some easily accessible way, but if you don't need to be actively dealing with it then you can file it (both electronically and mentally) until a time that it's needed again.

That's interesting, because if you can do that, it strongly suggests my monotropic tendencies are worse than I'd thought. 

If I had as many applications open as you suggest, they would all become a blur.