What I'd tell myself on day one of this process, knowing what I know now

Now on the other side of an approval, wanted to write down what I'd actually tell my earlier self, since a lot of the advice I found early on was either too general to act on or too specific to my exact situation to apply. Start the criteria-mapping exercise immediately, even with incomplete evidence — knowing which criteria you're likely targeting shapes everything downstream, and I wasted real time in the first couple months without that clarity. Request reference letters earlier than feels necessary — they're the least controllable timeline element and the one most likely to become a bottleneck later. Read real AAO decisions early, not just general advice articles — seeing the actual pattern of what succeeds and fails taught me more in one weekend than months of scattered general reading had. And the one that surprised me most in hindsight: the process was less about any single dramatic achievement and more about patiently, consistently documenting and organizing what I'd already done. I went in expecting to need to accomplish something new and impressive; what actually mattered most was documenting what I'd already genuinely done, well.