It’s been an interesting week. Last week, I spent many hours absorbing as much material as I can to make certain I covered all the basics and each step of setting up a WordPress website. Not that I didn’t know the steps, but that I have now set up enough WP sites that it has become rote.
When I went through the process of signing up at one site, I realized that I went through several steps quickly without noticing what steps were actually involved. While the process is automatic for me now, it took a bit of thought the first go round all those years ago, yet I was already considered a bit of a geek. So I had to go through the process again and again and again to note each step.
But how much of our behavior becomes memorized and so we go through the motions without realizing what all is involved?
Both good and bad?
We develop certain patterns to make our lives easier or at least that’s the logic. Yet sometimes the easier solution is just waiting to be found by analyzing our steps and patterns. This past month I learned how to open a banana.
Yup, 37 and I just found out how to open a banana. 🙂
Seriously I did like you probably do, which is “grab the handle and pull it” of course if it’s a little brown or green it doesn’t work that well. Brown means you bruise the banana more, green and it doesn’t tear.
BUT… flip the banana around, start at the “tail end” pinch the end. Turn the banana 90 degrees and pinch the end again and pull. You will find the banana opens easy, amazingly easy. Just right / Green /Brown makes no difference. Yet, this one little change has made life a bit easier. So what you say? It’s just a banana…
The point is sometimes when we slowly go through something that is rote, we actually see the steps. Then we realize we do things because it was what we learned, what seemed to work, or what worked at the time. Things change.
While writing the “Rockstar Guide to WordPress” I started explaining how to do a process. However when I actually did, I found the process had changed and was simpler. I also found a new ways to drop a few steps from the whole set-up process. Sadly being the geek that I am, I actually make some steps more complicated than they should be.
So, this week I ask you to notice the steps involved in something you do automatically. What steps do you do just because?
Is there a way to change what you do that will make it easier?
Or a way to eliminate or combine steps?
Rock on!
MJ Schrader
LoveRockstar
MJ,
Great point! I will definitely be aware today of places where I make things harder than they should be. I am going to try and condense some steps!
Thanks again for timely advice!
-Martha