Don’t just learn the responsibilities delegated to you. Also learn the responsibilities of those around you. Knowing others’ roles in addition to your own creates boundaries wherein to focus your efforts and remove unnecessary work.
Viewing entries in
Learn
When faced with a new task, ask whether it’s routine for someone else. That person is your expert. An expert can quickly clue you in to the necessary steps involved in a project, particularly one that follows a regular or systematic process.
I was missing several points of understanding related to a product. I had a few questions written down and fit into proper context. I turned to the user guide and quickly found three answers to three questions. I could spend hours trying to figure something out on my own. This is akin to recreating the wheel. Referring to instructions lowers the inputs required for potentially greater output.
I don’t get paid the overtime rate until I’ve recorded 40 hours of work. On a PTO or holiday week, that becomes a 50% loss on value for each OT hour worked below 40 hours. In some places (California) that could be a 100% loss or more on the overtime rate. If you shift the labor into prior or subsequent weeks you get a big boost in pay for the same hours. By not knowing the rules of the game you’re losing money.
I was preparing a professional presentation for delivery. I took notes during an untimed dry run of my demonstration which helped me memorize key points and refine my content delivery while also illuminating gaps in the presentation.
While learning a complex application, I struggled to find the answer to a couple of questions. I took some time to explore the software and stumbled on a seemingly mundane menu option. At first I was going to ignore it and move on, but I paid attention to my curiosity and clicked on the link. Another dimension of the interface opened to me and I quickly found the answer to my earlier questions.
While following instructions pause to look around periodically and get your bearings. You’ll learn more about each step of the process and how it contributes to the whole.
Document your work, particularly when making assumptions to get to a solution. Writing down your decision-making process is a powerful tool. You can leverage it for future decision-making, learning about yourself, or expanding your understanding of the issues.
When some type of performance is required from you, practice performing. If it’s a speech, try giving the speech. If it’s a number of push-ups, see how many you can do now. If it’s solving a math problem, try an example problem. You will quickly become keenly aware of your deficiencies. This will tell you where to focus your efforts in acquiring the requisite proficiency.
When faced with an unfamiliar or ambiguous situation it is helpful to put a strategy in place and take exploratory action. Much time can be wasted on low value theorizing. This is particularly true as the risks or costs of failure fall. In comparing the time investment of researching and theorizing a solution for an hour versus experimenting on a solution in that same time, the latter approach usually yields better and more specific insights. Thus, better solutions are obtained faster. Particularly with internal work assignments I’ve benefited from the fast to failure approach. An additional benefit to testing ideas with action is that you will know why an alternative is not viable. This is a strong point from which to champion your final solution.
If you’re at a conference or some other event where meals are unstructured, just pick someone to eat with. Adding yourself to a group of two or three is an easy way to borrow some of their pre-existing familiarity to break the ice and can make for easier conversation. You will certainly gain more than a meal. The alternative is eating alone or worse, sitting at a sparsely populated table where nobody talks.
I watched a presentation from a colleague and paid special attention to his transitions and how closely he followed the script. This gave me specific insights as to how I could glue my presentation together and where there was room to put my own spin on it. This helped me learn two demos in less than three hours. The key takeaway for me was to find an expert and watch what they do.
I asked my manager for clarification of expectations. The reply eliminated a challenging process and cut out significant low value preparation. My mind was free to focus on the meat of the presentation. Instead of memorizing a script, I quickly learned the concepts and was able to present in my own words. Also, using slides with diagrams and pictures related to the key concepts helped me bypass memorization and led to a more natural style of presentation. Memorization exponentially becomes a less efficient strategy as the quantity of material increases. Learning is the meta-skill that becomes exponentially more efficient as the quantity and complexity of material increases. For many years I mistakenly conflated memorizing with learning. This is a Pareto Guide 2 in 1 tip. Asking for clarification can reduce the size of a challenge and learning can be much more efficient than memorization.
I had a video and some text documents giving me examples of the proficiency I needed to develop in a subject. I needed to learn the content and demonstrate it. More than once the text documents did not provide sufficient detail or screenshots for understanding. Instead of clicking around the software at random, I turned to the video to see how the presenter handled the concept. A common application of this process is bypassing instructions included with a product and instead watching a video on YouTube or another site. Entire homes have been built or remodeled from knowledge gained on YouTube.