This last week I’ve been painting my basement. You know that when you are in a big painting project there is lots of preparation and lots of cleanup… it seems to me that less than 1/3 of the time spent “painting” is actually rolling or brushing – the bulk of the time is prep or cleanup.
I have seven different colors I’m putting up so I’m changing rollers and cleaning brushes a lot, but I’ve noticed a disturbing pattern when I start a new round of layers… I find myself walking around, getting this ready, moving that over there, moving something else somewhere else, … basically I continue to put off the rolling.
I eventually get to the point where I say “okay, whether I’m ready or not, I’m going to get started…” and I dip the roller in the tray and I start rolling it on the wall.
I don’t want to discount the need for proper preparation, but the only way a wall gets painted is if you put the roller in the tray and then roll the roller on the wall. You can clean and move and tweak and …. none of those prep tasks gets paint on the wall.
I see this trap/pitfall with many job seekers. They tweak their resume, they reread and re-adjust their cover letters, they read articles and posts and books… they do all this prep, but they never get down to the nuts and bolts of a job search.
Doing prep work is good and important, but you can’t hide behind it – eventually you need to do the job search (pick up the phone? Send “that” email? Go to the networking event? Invite someone to a one-on-one meeting?)
Don’t fool yourself into thinking you are in a serious job search if you continue to put off the job search.
