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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 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 limited. Where to start with adding skills to your current repertoire? 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

Incoming search terms:

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

Incoming search terms:

Tagged with: evernote-nvalt • evernote-vs-nvalt • how-to-use-tags-in-nvalt-2 • how-to-use-tags-with-nvalt • knowledge • monetizing-knowledge • nsinvalidargumentexception-xmarks • nvalt-and-evernote • nvalt-evernote • nvalt-send-to-evernote • nvalt-versus-evernote • nvalt-vs-evernote • Personal Power • s-last-blog-0-10-responses • skills • studying • theimmediatemoment • training • use-evernote-like-nvalt • using-know

Really Simple Syndication: What is RSS? Why use RSS feeds? How to use RSS?

By Michael Fletcher On August 14, 2011 · 17 Comments

So you visited my site or another blog and would like to pop in more often and keep track of the content on the site. So you add the site as a bookmark and Bob’s your father’s brother. Except what if you wanted to be notified when new content is added or existing content is updated. Well you can by subscribing to the RSS feed but what the heck is an RSS feed?

What is RSS

RSS feeds are the answer to the modern internet. The internet is all grown up and with the growth of broadband across the planet we have as a planet access to more information faster than at any time in history. We are no longer limited by our technology but by time we have available. RSS feeds are a result of the change in the face of technology allowing content on the internet to change constantly. The internet as you know it will not be the same in 5 minutes time and has probably changed fairly drastically in the last 60 seconds. RSS feeds were designed with this in mind, the dynamic web a web in constant flux. A static bookmark is no longer sufficient for a website who may add and update content many times an hour. We need content as and when it changes RSS delivers your internet right to your browser in real time.

RSS means Really Simple Syndication

The syndication bit simply means the delivery of media and the really simple is what RSS is.

Now you:

No Longer need to check for updates when a site is updated your RSS feed gets updated automatically
No longer need to navigate to each site you regularly read the content is right there when you open your RSS feed reader
Can receive breaking news as and when it happens
Drastically reduce the time you need to spend on the internet
Drastically increase the amount of media you can consume

I have included an additional video as well as text guides on how to use RSS feeds all of which are quite comprehensive, in the resources at the end of the post should anything still be unclear.

How to use RSS

Get an RSS reader there are a plethora of RSS readers on the market for sale and for free I suggest starting with a free reader like Google Reader
Once you’ve found a RSS feed you’d like to subscribe to click on the RSS icon.
If there is a drop down select your reader if not you should see a screen similar to the one below where you’ll be able to choose your preferred RSS reader.
Go back to Google reader and you should see the latest posts from the RSS feed you’ve subscribed to in Google Reader

That is as they say is that. Rinse and repeat for every site RSS you’d like to add and a come back daily and keep track of your important sites as and when they change.