Advantage – Dave Glardon

Good morning, and happy Hump Day! I hope your day is off to a great start.

Sometimes, when you’re looking for solutions to a problem, things begin to appear out of thin air. At least that’s the way it feels. You know what you think you need, but something you never really considered comes along and says, “Here – try me.” It may be something very familiar, or something completely out of the blue. You just never know.

Yesterday morning, as I was starting my day, I got a completely unexpected email offering me some ongoing freelance work for the next several months. It’s work I’ve done before, and for a company and team with whom I truly enjoy working. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Anybody who’s ever applied for a military career has taken the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB as it’s known. It’s a long test full of questions designed to identify your ideal vocations. At the end, they give you some recommended options from which to choose. And the whole time you’re thinking, “Who wrote these questions???” Well, that would be me.

I first stumbled across this opportunity several years ago when my contract ended in a previous job. Unemployment will get you busy, and there’s no telling what you’ll turn up. And in all honesty, most of it is garbage. I’ll never forget the guy who wanted me to write a federal grant proposal so he could get the money to save a few acres of hunting land in a divorce. I wish I was making that up.

But somewhere through all of that, I came upon the opportunity to write a series of questions relating to general shop knowledge – wood shop, metal shop, etc. That blossomed into writing for four different sections of the test, and when the assignment was over, they promised I’d hear from them again. More than 1,000 questions later, they still reach out to me every time they get a new contract.

So, I guess you could say this one didn’t literally just drop out of the air. I have a history with this company, and it’s paid off well. But if I had never gone looking for freelance work that first time, I’d have never heard about the new opportunity today. They’d have found somebody else years ago who could do the job just as well, and that’s who would have gotten the call this time.

It’s hard to tell sometimes exactly what will grow when you plant a seed. But if you never went looking for a seed in the first place, the answer is weeds – because, in my experience, weeds are perennial and grow in every square inch of ground that doesn’t have something else growing in it. The best way to avoid weeds is to choke them out with the good stuff.

Sometimes, the best things in life take the longest to cultivate. I read that a cherry seed can take up to 100 years to germinate and begin to grow. In that length of time, it’s likely the grower will have gotten impatient and planted a dozen other things right next to it. But sooner or later, a stalk with a few little leaves will begin to emerge and grow into a magnificent hardwood specimen.

It works that way with relationships, jobs, business ideas, and any number of things we really want. But unless you go looking for a seed in the first place, there’s nothing to plant and nothing to cultivate. And in its absence, weeds will grow. The most beautiful sprawling lawn was once an undeveloped eyesore. Somebody had to see its potential beauty long before it began to show.

If there’s something you want to do, something you’d like to improve, or something you think you’d like to drop out of thin air when you need it the most, now is the time to start planting those seeds. If we wait until we’re hungry to plant a garden, we’ll be eating dirt for several months before anything good comes up. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Find the solution before you have the need.

We can’t take advantage of every opportunity that comes our way. But make no mistake, if we don’t take a chance on any of them, we’ll find fewer new opportunities coming along behind them. Opportunity favors those who seek it. It only knocks if the door is open and the lights are on. But if you close the door and turn off the lights, it’ll just move on to somebody who wants it more.

Plant those seeds. Put a little faith in something that may not look so awesome on the surface. The most radiant diamond was once a chunk of coal. If you open your eyes and your mind, there’s a diamond in the rough right there in front of you. All you have to do is pick it up and do something to really make it shine.

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!

Good morning! I hope your day is off to a fantastic start.

Well, it’s a new month and, for those of us in the US who just got a badly needed holiday, it’s the beginning of a new (and slightly shortened) week. I love three-day weekends. I just don’t necessarily love the four days at work that follow. I’ve always said that when you get to skip a Monday, you get four more to make up for it. Hopefully this week will be the exception.

I don’t know why we dread Mondays so much. Yes, it means the end of the weekend and heading back to work. But, if we did the weekend even slightly right, we’re going back somewhat rested and refreshed. If not, we may want to take a closer look at how we spend our weekends. But the point is, this should be the time of week when we’ve got the most energy for a day at work.

It’s also the time when we’ve got the most leftover energy to tackle some of our own goals. If there’s anything you’ve been planning to do for yourself outside of work, earlier in the week is generally better. Not only do you have more energy, but if things don’t work out one day, you still have a few more to go. The later we get into the week, the fewer chances we’ll have to do those things.

We go to work every day. We don’t really even question it, because that’s just the way it is. We can say we don’t have a choice in the matter, but we do. It just comes down to priorities. And over the course of our lives, few things will take a higher priority than work. If you don’t believe me, quit. Better still, just try to imagine it. Some things are better experienced in the mind.

There have been a few times in my life when I was unemployed. Like the time I found out my job was seasonal, but nobody had explained that little detail in the beginning. As a contract employee, you learn to plan for the inevitable “job’s done – thanks!” And the last time, it was because the company hired a new CEO who decided to cut our division completely. It happens.

And when it does, you immediately kick into high gear looking for something else. You think back to all those positions you’d applied for in the past and quickly check to see if they’re hiring. You put your resume on the job boards and check your email several times a day. Meanwhile, you look for any little thing you can do to cut expenses and bring in just a little bit of income to hold you over.

It’s amazing how creative and energetic we can be when the need is there. And the more urgent the need, the more we try to take advantage of every possible opportunity at our disposal. Then we find a new job and that first paycheck arrives. Whew! That was a close one! Now you can breathe a little easier and get back to normal. If you’ve ever been in that position, you know exactly what I mean.

The only problem is, “normal” isn’t exactly the best place to be. Because normal means you’re back in the same position you were in previously. You may have a better, more secure job with lots of room for growth. But at the end of the day, you’re still entrusting your financial well-being on somebody else’s ability and willingness to keep you employed.

Now, let me ask you a question. If you found yourself suddenly looking for a new job, or just needing an immediate inflow of extra money, would you prefer to wait until the need is there to do something about it? Or do you think maybe you’d want to keep your eyes open to new opportunities while things are going well? You know, think about the solution before the need arises.

If there’s something you want to do for yourself, don’t let opportunities slip by. If a rainy day will get in the way, take advantage of the sunny days. If you know other things will eventually consume your time, work around them. Take care of your own priorities now, before those other things demand your attention.

There are seven days in a week. Nothing we can do will ever change that. And every time we let a day or even a moment of opportunity slip past, it’s gone. Make the most of those opportunities now and when other things get in the way, you’ll be that much further ahead.

Today will be over before you know it. And there may come a point where you’ll look back at today and wish you’d spent that time more wisely. If that’s even a remote possibility, do something about it now. There will always be other priorities and demands on your time. You can’t change that. All you can change is what you do with each moment along the way.

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!

Tag: Advantage

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