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Personal Power: Know What You Don’t Know

By Michael Fletcher On September 26, 2011 · 14 Comments

Critical to the way you use your available time is the number of skills at your disposal to process free time into meaningful output. When all you know how to do is play on that shiny console your free time options are severely reduced. So how do we start adding to our skill set? Where to start, where to end?

What is Know What You Don’t Know?

Know what you don’t know is a systematic process of working backward from a desired goal or skill detailing the knowledge you need to get from your current level of knowledge.

Why use Know What You Don’t Know?

The frustration caused by how vast a topic can seems when looking at it as a whole is often the reason used for giving up or worse still not trying. I know the first time I tried to teach myself guitar I fell into this trap. I knew what a guitar should sound like, so I went out and bought one along with a song book. For a week I suffered as I sat, for hours whacking at different bits of the book unsuccessfully. A month later a string broke and I never played that guitar again, eventually selling it when I got a good offer for it. I failed. I know now though that it had nothing to do with how hard the guitar is to learn but had everything to do with me not having any clue what I needed to know and in what order I needed to learn it.

Know What You Don’t Know is for me the simplest way to learn a new skill, it’s simply a matter of at a very high level figuring out what is involved in learning your new skill. This is really important in order to acquire a well rounded study program as well. I often find that I tend to spend more time on the excercises I enjoy rather than the ones that I need to work on. This well rounded approach has tons of knock on benefits as well. As an example the second time I tried to learn to play the guitar I faired a lot better until I got a stuck with a couple of barre chords. Try as I might I did not have the dexterity to hold the chord and produce a clear crisp sound.

At first I kept at it trying over and over and it didn’t help. I think it actually got worse as I started to get frustrated and lose my cool. Having knowledge of all the things I needed to learn I kept on practicing in all the areas I knew I had to learn. A week later I could play the barre chords easily. As it happens I just didn’t have the strength when I started. What was critical here was the fact that I knew that that barre chord was the be all and end all of my guitar career and I was able to focus on other areas of my playing which ultimately built my skill and dexterity to the point where I succeeded. I have no doubt that it would have taken me twice as long or longer to master that had I kept at only that.

Know What You Don’t Know gives you confidence and direction and keeps you working toward your goal.

If this sounds good to you my next post will be a practical example of how to use Know What You Don’t Know to learn anything.

How to use know what you don’t know a practical example.

Useful links:

Are these three words ruining your life an interesting discussion about the psychology of failure/success by Jonathan Mead on the Zen Habits blog

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The Price of Perfection

By Michael Fletcher On September 15, 2011 · 7 Comments

The past week has been a reminder to me on the price we have to pay when we retreat to the safety of our minds. Once we achieve any success in an activity it’s so very easy to lose sight of our original reason for taking part. I spent the last two weeks not doing what I love, writing, teaching and learning, allowing myself to be controlled by expectations. Having had a few good weeks on myDL I’m struggling to write. Even though the success has been very moderate I’m suddenly finding myself quitting in the middle of posts and shooting down more ideas than ever paying the price for pursuing perfection. It’s not enough to find your passion! you need to find a way to keep it yours too!

Re-connect with your passion

Connect to the original reason you found your passion often. Go back to the reason you started. Whether your passion makes you $1 a year or $100 a day you when you started you started because you connected deeply with it. Connect with that feeling often. Remember all the reasons why you’d gladly do what you’re doing for free. Remember that some time good enough is good enough, the price of perfection is high when you let it stop you producing.

Study how the professionals progressed

Research heroes of your field and look how they progressed. Even the most gifted of gifted athletes and writers knocked their head once or twice. They didn’t start out perfect but they always had passion. No one is born able to do it all. Read about how they did it. Study their mindset. Model their strategies. Use their tactics. Have a good old laugh at the mistakes that they made. When you’re done, have a quick chuckle at your own expense 10 years from now someone will be laughing at how you knocked your head and you won’t care when you’ve made it. Passion will fuel you when you know that you won’t be perfect, but that you’re doing the right things. The price of perfection is less time spent learning.

Change your mindset about failure

Change your mind about failure. You’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to make plenty. Live with it. This is not permission for you to fail! This is permission to make mistakes. Put together a system and incorporate an element of quality checking before you complete. Systems are often passion killers, use your system to channel your energy to the parts of this blogging lark you’re most passionate about. When I write I now complete my outline, knock out my first draft. I then revise the piece while also checking for glaring spelling and punctuation mistakes then I revise again at least 12 hours later. When I just started out I found I still missed a glut of errors. I should have been checking more until my error margin was acceptable. At the moment I still miss the odd mistake but if I do I fix it and move on I still trust my system. You should do the same set up a system and stick to it as long your success rate is within acceptable limits. The price of perfection is going to be a heart attack if you don’t have trusted system to handle the areas of your blogging which you struggle most with.

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Personal Power: How to use Know What You Don’t Know

By Michael Fletcher On August 31, 2011 · 10 Comments

Know What You Don’t Know is the process I use to approach pretty much every new skill I want to add to my box of tricks. I’ll run you through at a very high level how you can use Know What You Don’t Know to put together a blogging action plan.

Step 1 – What do we need to know

In a very Covey way we begin with the end in mind.

What is the desired outcome?

We would like to learn how to build a successful blog.

On a high level what would this entail?

If we had no clue at this point it’s time to go do some research. For Dummies books are very useful at this stage as is hanging around in forums as you’ll pick up the terminology that you’ll soon be fluent in.

For me at the highest level Blogging comprises – Good Content, Good Design and Good Promotion.

During step one we are trying to be as general as possible.

Step 2 – What is Good?

Typically at this point I will spend time looking for examples of Good Content, Good Design and Good Promotion. You’re probably reading blogs with these elements already. Subscribe to these good examples and read them religiously. Study the structure of their content, look at what design elements Good sites have in common and start studying how these sites promote themselves. Do a search, are they paying for advertising, relying on social networking site and word of mouth.

Write down what you notice when things don’t make sense take some time and do some research.

At this point if we were to write down your total knowledge on blogging should have lists that look something like the this except a lot longer (this is just an example):

Content	Design	Promotion
useful links	Domain name	Social Media
bullet points	Ads placed close to text	RSS and E-mail placement
Length of post	Custom banner	Blog roll use and placement
pictures	simple theme style	SEO and keywords used?
scannable	Content Management system	incentives – free e-books etc.

Make this list as long as you need it to be and keep adding to it. I suggest you use a tool like Evernote which allows you to access your notes regardless of whose computer you’re working on or just to keep a notebook and with you and constantly update your list.

Step –3 Plan and Research

Go through each of the items in your list and decide in what order you need to know them and then research them. Find websites, books, forums and chat rooms and get as much information as you can on each subject you’ve listed.

By going through this process you will be in a position to find the right resources at the right times. Don’t be surprised if you find that for every item you research you find 4 more items to add to your list that you need to research.

The beauty of this system is that as you add items in step 2 you get sight of the bigger picture and you start gaining confidence in what you know and what you still need to learn. Add one or a couple of these items to your to do list each day and you’ll quickly find your knowledge increasing.

Disclaimer:

Using Know What You Don’t Know will not turn you into the next Darren Rowse or John Mayer. It will give you a framework to learn what they learnt in a structured way. You still need to do the hard work of actually learning and applying and practicing. What this system does do is help you guage your own progress.

Useful Link

Are these three words ruining your life an interesting discussion about the psychology of failure/success by Jonathan Mead on the Zen Habits blog