How sports psychology might apply to job searching

As I talked about yesterday, Kate Clancy (a professor of anthropology) had an interesting couple of posts a couple months ago on the application of sports psychology to her life in academia. She lists the factors that she does and does not control, and how she rates herself on each one. I've taken her list and modified it a bit for my work:

Factors that I do control: time I put in, effort, my decision making, my attitude (needs to improve!), how I interact with coworkers, my knowledge of the literature, my lab skills, my writing.

Factors that I do not control: When the plant starts or ends a process, my bosses' decisions, our customer's decisions.

I think this applies doubly to those who are seeking jobs. Job seekers do not control: the broader economy, the relative lack of chemistry jobs, the massive supply of chemists that are out there, the location of those jobs, the HR departments and their hoops, the employers and their needs. However, there are a lot of things that job seekers do control: the amount of time spent searching, applications written, effort spent networking, the appearance/quality of your CV, your interview presentation, etc.

I fully admit that I spend much more time bit complaining about the factors than I do not control, rather than the factors that I do. Readers, how about you?