You can easily get entrenched within a morass of details. Primary questions — those issues which, when addressed and answered, essentially take care of sub-questions and lesser categories of details — need to be identified and prioritized.
Many people are unable to recognize, identify and extract the primary questions. Why? Because, if you are unfamiliar with the paradigmatic, upper echelons of the legal criteria being applied (for instance, in a legal matter), then how are you going to be able to “separate out” the proverbial grain from the chaff?
At all 3 of the main stages of a Federal Disability Retirement case — at the Initial Stage; if denied, at the Reconsideration Stage; if denied a second time, before an Administrative Judge at the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board — it is important to either preemptively or actively discern and discard the unimportant side-issues, and to focus upon the primary questions in a Federal Disability Retirement case.
The rule of life always applies: Prioritize; identify the primary questions and issues; take care of what is relevant; then, the rest of the “minor details” will often naturally fall to the wayside.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Lawyer
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 