Knowing What We Can Know
Strategy is setting a vision, making a path, knowing what we can know, and planning for the variables. To know what we know . . . That means having command of the information available.
For a while now, new bloggers, mostly those who are younger, have emailed or IMed to ask me the most basic questions. It’s usually obvious from their message that they haven’t done the any research to answer the question on their own. I used to answer and send them on their way again. I don’t anymore. Now I point them in the direction where they might look.
Are they wrong to ask? No.
It’s always good to ask someone who’s been there. Though you might argue when to do that.
But they’re wrong if they rely on me to do their homework. It hurts them for several reasons.
- I don’t have all of the answers.
- My information could be dated.
- I’m wrong as often as I’m right.
- They’re not investing in themselves.
I’m only one source in a world of the Internet. We often stop at the first answer to our questions. The first answer isn’t necessarily the best. It’s a great strategy to seek out all of the information available.
- Do a search.
- Ask someone who usually agrees, someone who usually disagrees, and someone who usually doesn’t have an opinion.
- Ask an expert.
Having a strategy to find all of the information available at the beginning sets the foundation to build upon. Curiosity is a great teacher.
end of story.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!!
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Liz,
As always, thank you for an engaging post. I would add: read–business books, journals, newsletters, business blogs, and professional organization’s newsletters and websites. Sometimes I wonder if we are losing the art of reading and research.
Hi Lewis,
Thank you for that. How silly of me, a publisher, not to include print. What was I thinking? Yeah, we need to go there too. I sure do. 🙂
This, as we know, applies to most anything you have questions about.
We get a lot of questions e-mailed to the rescue, and we used to exhaust ourselves writing every answer from scratch. Over time, I started copying and pasting text and links into my account on Backpack. If I can use a previous answer as-is for a new question I do. If I can use most of it, but with a little tailoring for the new question, I do that. It saves time to write the answers that really do have to be written from scratch. I’m pulling together a series of FAQ pages, so that I can just point there.
All the information is out there…if one looks. With the Internet, it’s a hell of a lot easier to find info now than it was, say, 20 years ago.
Hello Liz
I would also suggest that they try modelling other great writers & bloggers. What do they do that works? What can you borrow and adapt for your own purposes? That doesn’t mean copying someone else’s ‘voice’ (it never works) but looking for tips and techniques and approaches that you can add to your toolbox.
Joanna
Hi Joanna!
That’s such great advice. It’s about seeing what has been the process that has helped others succeed. Yeah!
Trying to get there too fast never works. It’s funny. Some folks think they can do what Darren did without putting in the work that Darren put in. That’s just silly. 🙂
Hi Whitney!
It sure is a whole lot easier than it was years ago, yes!
You did the work to make the pages you have those links and bits stored on. To me, that’s the real benefit of how easy it is — we can do research wider and learn faster. Then we can keep what we find where we can access it again and again.
Too cool to resist. 🙂
I found out a quite awhile ago that the best help I could give anyone is helping them find their own answers. What’s right for me isn’t necessarily right for anyone else. Heck, in some ways I’m still trying to find out what’s right for me. 😀
Sometimes younger folks just have to ask someone more experienced to get that outside conformation of what they may have suspected all along…that they need to do it themselves. I know I did.
Hi Whitney,
You hit the nail on the head when you said finding out information is so much easier than it used to be. Anyone who remembers life before the WWW will attest to that. Sheesh, I remember I was in my thirties when I loaded up the first encyclopedia that came on a CD.
Now that’s not an excuse to mark me old mind you. 😀
Hey Kirk,
I’m not about to tell you how I used to do my research with a quill and an ink well. 🙂
With a flickering oil lamp that danced shadows upon the walls by the crackling warmth of the wood stove over many quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…Dang! The well’s dry! 😉
Oh wow! You had oil for your lamp! We were poor. Ours used dung. 🙂
It was terrible…our cow died and the horse ran off so we had to melt down the last of our pork fat for oil and we nearly starved thinking of breakfast. But we had light. It smelled like breakfast but we had light!
Oh, I can see where this is going. 😀
I’m so laughing . . .
Light! Oh holy cow, may your cow rest in peace. I will think of it as the sun shines glaringly on Lake Michigan this morning blinding me.
I think your pig fat may have worked too well. It’s daylight all of the time here. Why do you think I live inside your computer?
Bet you didn’t think I’d go there. 🙂
I can’t think of a better elf to have in my computer than you, Liz. 😀
Hi Kirk,
You’ll be pleased to know. It’s ver light in here and looks to be recently swept clean. 🙂