I have been working on an application for a couple of weeks now. The position requires replying to several essay questions and totally revamping my resume. My tactic for getting this application done was a cross between researching the company and its people, writing answers to the essay questions, re-writing my answers because my initial response went in a non-preferred direction, procrastinating due to doubt, and balking at figuring out how to change my resume.
After spending so long perfecting my resume, I am quite attached to the current product: the format, the phrasing, the terminology, the selected experience. Given the task at hand, the only one of these things I can keep is my formatting. I’m even debating changing my title line. It’s rough. The process isn’t just daunting, it’s emotionally draining: I have to rebuild myself from scratch.
I’m not sure I even know how to do that anymore.
This was the task I’ve been delaying the longest. Today, I decided I was done with such nonsense and was going to at least try. (Well, after re-checking to make sure the position was still listed online, I decided to try; I was not about to waste my efforts on an opportunity that had already closed. #FinalDelayTactic.) After all, the options seemed to be try and possibly fail, or fail to try at all. I gritted my teeth (literally) and started tearing apart my resume (metaphorically). After struggling for several minutes, I paused: if I were writing my resume from scratch, what would I do?
Google it.
Looking up resumes for a how to include a blog on a resume led to my search for resume examples for similar job titles. Was my research another delay tactic? At first brush against this question, I was concerned, but I quickly found myself actively engaged in the product much more than the process. I wanted to get this done and done right.
Just as I started to implement the meat-and-potatoes into my resume, I get a phone call that I really shouldn’t ignore. I bit my lip, exhaled hard, and answered. It was a good conversation, but mercifully not a particularly long one because my mind was on the task at hand. I was focused. I was going to get this done. However, our conversation reminded me that I had other things to prepare for first, so I jumped on my other tasks with such fervor that I completed them faster than I’d ever done before and swiveled back to the resume.
A little rip here, a little tug there, a little deletion of this irrelevant experience and some addition of that parallel work. When I first looked at my resume and thought about the changes I needed to make, I despaired that I wouldn’t even have a page to fill and increased the font sizes to make the content look longer. By the end of the session, I had to decrease the font size and play with spacing to make it fit on one page. All totalled, I spent five hours of intense hands-on re-drafting of this puppy – and I had to tear myself away to attend an event tonight.
By the time my alarm went off to get ready to leave, the resume was in workable condition. Not done – certainly not – but it looked like a resume that could plausibly be submitted for this position. I sent it to a friend basically saying, “Look how far I’ve come!” I was ecstatic, and I wanted to share my joy with her.
(She has already shared her suggestions back with me. Bless her – it wasn’t ready for a review yet, but she took the time to help anyway.)
Tomorrow will be the post-hack-and-slash day. There will be cleaning, and tweaking, and distilling, and clarifying, and oh so much polishing. But that’s for tomorrow. Tonight, I am satisfied. I saw what I did, and it was good. And I’m so excited about what I got done today that I’m thrilled to be able to jump up and continue the work tomorrow. It’s going to be awesome.
When have you put something off only to discover later the joy in doing it? How do you feel when you get around to checking things off on your to-do list that have been sitting there for a little too long? Are there any tasks you’ve been putting off that you found yourself thinking about while reading this post? If so, what are you going to do to get it done?
