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By: Amy Rossi
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Do you wake up in the morning and jump out of bed ready to go? Or do you wake groggily, turn on the news and, before you know it, it's noon and you've lost half the day to procrastination? If you fall into the latter, I have a resource that can change your mornings from “blah” to “wow.” Hal Elrod’s book The Miracle Morning offers a cure to two of the biggest culprits triggering procrastination: time and focus.
In my experience, most military-affiliated applicants and workers are NOT LAZY; they are simply trying to manage their time and focus to complete multiple, competing and complex priorities. In an effort to get more done, they start knocking out quicker (easier) tasks over necessary (more complex) tasks. This prioritization results in a larger volume of completed items, but, not necessarily, the desired results. Over time, the lack of forward momentum gets frustrating, and applicants continue spending more time on quicker tasks, like applying to jobs, over more complex tasks, like redoing the resume to meet the job description requirements or updating online profiles to match resumes—or they burn out and find themselves remote in hand, eating a bowl of cereal at noon.
Procrastinate \prə-ˈkras-tə-ˌnāt\ to be slow or late about doing something that should be done: to delay doing something until a later time because you do not want to do it, because you are lazy, etc. -Merriam-Webster's Dictionary.
So why do motivated, dedicated, and professional individuals find themselves in this predicament?
It seems like somewhere between dropping paperwork to get out and starting a job search, a mass data dump happens. In a hurry to drop paperwork to leave the military and start a job search, many Veterans don’t realize that core military values apply to the civilian world and to the transition to civilian sector positions.
Plan, Prepare, and Train so that you are ready to execute your mission.