Slow and Steady Wins The Race

52 days. 1262 hours. That’s what we have left of 2012. I am really stuck on how I finish 2012. It’s been an interesting year for me. It will be the first full year that I didn’t have an employer – my first full year as a consultant. I spent the earlier part of the year on a plane every week on a project – I achieved US Airways preferred status and I don’t ever want to go back! While my work is project-based, my business development, relationship management and book writing are ongoing tasks that need to be nudged forward a bit every day, every week. It’s easy for me to focus on the projects – they are discrete and have a clear deliverable, but the ongoing stuff that requires consistency and has little immediate reward is so darn hard to get done. Even blogging – I really like to blog, but it’s like the movie Groundhog Day, I wake up on my blog days and I wonder how I’m here again having the same challenge of collecting my thoughts to put them on the page.

I imagine that managing your MBA applications is a lot like me managing my work. Your “day job” is like my consulting projects – you know what you have to do, where you have to be – you can be on auto-pilot. Even if you don’t particularly like your job, it’s easy enough to be there and do the work. Your business school applications are like my ongoing tasks – maybe there is a big thing like taking a GMAT course that keeps you focused for a while, but then you have to contend with the minute, thankless details of the application – multiple essay revisions, multiple resume revisions, thank you notes and emails to admissions officers and students that you’ve met, pestering your recommenders. This is tedious stuff that when complete doesn’t yield immediate finality (it’s just a small step in the large process) or gratification (other than the 10 seconds post-task).

You know what’s coming though…it’s all about the small things. It’s the arduous, seemingly insignificant tasks that lead to big wins, like getting invited for an admissions interview and gaining admission to an MBA program. These little tasks are as draining as big projects (not sure why) so as you plan your weekend application work schedule account for the mental demand that these to-do items will take and don’t try to do too many of them at one time. There are 52 days left in 2012…that’s enough time to pace yourself versus trying to hunker down and do everything all in one sitting.