Guest Post - Daniel Watrous
I’m the technology guy in my house (maybe not surprising). In fact, there aren’t many technology problems that I can’t solve. It was no big surprise then when my wife asked me how to do something in a certain program on her computer. When I said “let me come have a look” she replied with an exasperated voice and said “oh, never mind, I can figure it out”.
What happend?
Why didn’t she want me to come “have a look”? I asked her and she explained that if I was just going to fiddle around with it until I found the solution that she could do ‘that’ herself. She only asked because she thought I might know ‘off the top of my head’ exactly what to do.
I think that people are surprised when I don’t just know the exact answer to every technology question at the drop of a hat. After all, I have been programming for 12 years, I have a college degree in Electrical Engineering and can explain how most of the guts of a computer work at the atomic level. I’m supposed to know that stuff, right? Not necessarily.
The “correct” approach to technology
Imagine this scenario. Let’s say my wife is creating a chore chart for the kids and wants a document with a table and little pictures in each box in the table. This would be my approach:
- Look for a menu option that says ‘tables, ‘insert’, ‘add’ or something similar: FAIL
- Ask google something like “programname tables”: FAIL
- Check the program help files for table: FAIL
- Manually create a table by first creating a box, then copy and paste it and align it with the other boxes: SUCCESS
Notice that I FAILED with the first three things I tried. Here’s the brilliant part: The first three FAILS combined consumed less than two minutes of my time!
You might also be interested to know that my lazy engineer mentality caused me to attempt the totally manual approach dead last. If the program has some way of creating the tables for me then I don’t want to waste my time doing it manually. I always try the easiest possible solution first!
Why is it helpful to think of checking for a menu option as a FAIL? Precisely because the unknown scares people. That fear turns into resistance (read The War of Art). Many people will avoid starting a blog or researching a new niche because they don’t know exactly which button to push or whether they’ve found THE WINNING NICHE.
NEWS FLASH: I don’t know either. Every time I sit down to setup a blog or create new software, I have to fail. I click the wrong thing or login to the wrong account or install the wrong version or even create something that works but is based on an incorrect assumption. The list goes on and on.
The key to success with technology
If you’re on the verge of starting something new, whether you plan to start a blog or research a new niche, let me suggest you plan to live by these two tenets
- Fail fast, fail often.
- There are very few mistakes that you can’t fix easily.
The real trick is to fail without considering that a reflection on your personal capacity. Far too often when we fail at something we wrongly assume that we are failures. I’m not sure where this tendency comes from, but it just doesn’t make sense to equate not knowing how to do something with being a failure.
One final absurd example
Imagine that you go to your blog (or email, or twitter account) and try to login. You forgot your password. Oh the horror! Is that really the end of the world? Do you beat your self up all day long? Is all hope lost? Nope. You just try again or click the little button that says “forgot password” and reset it.
When it comes to internet marketing and learning to use a blog to publish information, why don’t you just pretend that you forgot your password. If your first attempt to publish something doesn’t work, it’s not a reflection of your character. Just try again. Click something else. If you approach a niche that doesn’t deliver results, just hit reset. Move on to the next niche.
Just keep clicking until you find something that works!
You’re extremely unlikely to break anything (at worst you might publish a bogus article for a few seconds). Just go and give it a try and see what you come up with.
