Beginning Technology Success

For too long, technology has belonged to a small band of enthusiasts. This group represents such a small fraction of the population that assuming you could find one to help you they would cost a fortune to keep around. Worst, those that you can afford, generally speaking, are either going to be gone at the drop of the first purse string or they truly are NOT the best at giving you what you want and know they have no where else to go.

Gaping holes

Technology has gone beyond the standard clerical life cycle it began as in the early Jurassic era. That would be the 80’s for those of you keeping track of the time line. In that time, a computer was used just to do administrative duties: accounting, filing, copying you would think in the 20 years since then computers would have learn to do more the fact is they have the problem is you haven’t. Conventionally, technology is both a mine field and a paradise it has both the capability to cause problems as well as solve problems. The industry as a whole knows but the method that allows a single person to get results seems like a mystery suited for Sherlock Holmes.

The reasons behind that are not important, everyone tries to save their job but what is important that you’re lack of knowledge about how to get results from a computer is not a lack of ability, skills, or access to the proper tools. You inability to get results is a product of you past education.

Education works against you

As students we are taught by countless theories of how we process information. So many in fact you find yourself with a headache trying to understand them all. In simplest terms, you are a product of the 3 r’s: reading, writing, and arithmetic but all of that can be summed up in one simple word- repetition.

Why is 1+1=2? Is it because of some fundamentally leap in logic, some epiphany of epic proportions? No, it’s because the formula was drilled into your head beginning at the earliest age possible. The logic, the truth behind the formula doesn’t surface until years later for some not at all they just continue to regurgitate what they have been told all their lives.

Math is not the only source of this repetitive thinking, any subject, any concept brought before you in a classroom has been designed to be repeated, repeated, repeated till your ears bleed and you have memorized it. Columbus discovered America in 1492, why because that is what we would told over and over. We weren’t there and the truth is a matter of history but it reflects the underlying current of education that all things we “know” are a product of repetition not a function of doing. In other words, our results have been tied to a loose kinship between what we have memorized and what we perceive to be the application of that knowledge.

Note, there is nothing wrong with that until you enter the world of technology. Since its birth as an industry, getting results from computers has eluded the vast majority of people. The sad truth is that according to census data, less than 18% of the US popular can do little more than use a word processor or send email.* I think the census in erring on the upside. It has been my experience that the technically gifted is less than 5% of the population. The average user, that is those people in a position requiring computer function, can only function in the capacity that they have memorized by watching someone else. Once again, if the step-by-step methodology is not there they can not do it.

On Technological Thinking

There in lies the rub. With technology, to function as a trained user, you CANNOT memorize your way to success. I don’t, neither do any of my co-horts, we function on a level of result oriented, processing thinking. or DIGI-Tasking as I like to call it. Tech thinking is a process not a series of steps. It is the ability to reduce a problem down to its parts, reengineer in another framework, and then build it as a machine oriented equivalent. That may seem like a lot to grasp at this point but it will get clearer and simpler as we go. In essence, with computers or technology in general in order to get results you can’t follow as series of canned steps because no two situations will be the same. Nor will any two environments be the same so you have to take into account where you want to be and then think into the box to get the results.

For example, you’re at home you want to send an email. Simple enough, open up your email software, address it, write the content, press send. You’re done, simple step by step instruction. Now you’re at work you need to send out 20 emails to 20 different people all containing the same content adding individual information for each person to the mail message. You could do it the previous way one at a time but that is not what technology is about you are not gaining any productivity by doing it the one by one method. But you don’t know how, and this is the critical part, you were never taught how to logically think your way out of this box you’re in.

Technology Reflected Back

You computer is a reflection of you- the user. Your hands, connected to your brain produce results. You have been conditioned by the industry to believe that it can do everything you want it to do just by sitting down and keying and clicking. NOPE! That’s hype not truth. Your computer is an extension of your abilities, of your skills. If you’re an accountant and you want to use an accounting software package you need only apply your knowledge of accounting in a digital environment you will adapt fairly quickly. But if you are a photographer using the same software and you can’t balance your own checkbook, chancing are your battle will be all up hill because you not only have to learn the software but the process of accounting as well. That doesn’t mean you can’t it just means you have to adjust your expectations and requirements to get the same results as an accountant.

The photographer graced with the knowledge of darkrooms, processing, color, and composition will take an imaging software package and by practice adapt fairly quickly the accountant who only dabbles in family photos will spend more time trying to understand the process of photography.

SO what does it all mean? You bring to the computer you set of skills. You bring your knowledge base, your real world experiences, and ability to solve real world situations minus the technology. A computer’s job is to enhance and facilitate your abilities NOT REPLACE them. Software is just a digital equivalent to some programmer’s or programmers, understand of that particular field. Software is designed to reflect its real world counterpart not eliminate it. In other words, a computer can make it faster, simpler, and cleaner to perform just about any task but it cannot eliminate or replace the hands required to perform the function. If you can do it, the computer can improve upon the process and your skills but it cannot do it for you, you are still doing the work the computer is just taking the hands-on work out of the process.

Time is not on our side

We are all strapped for time. Between home, work, school, kids, church, functions, family, we barely have time to breathe. A computer is designed to reduce the time requirement of function in our lives, it can’t replace them but it can reduce mundane and important tasks time requirements down to zero. Which is why we invented the darn thing in the first place unfortunately between the first calculator, fax machine, and the modern computer everyone seemed to forget that the technology is no better or worst than the person using it, it is not a magic pill that can magically transport us to freedom you have to commit to the journey before you will see results.

The first step in the Ultimate User’s Technology Success System is to re-frame your notions about you and technology. Forget about what you believe it does, how it does it, and your place in the technical equation. We are going to begin to change the way you approach technology, the machine, and the situation you find yourself in that requires the added juice a computer can provide to get it done better. We are going to not only change the way you think about computers but how you are use to viewing a computer, and how you can take advantage of technology without frustration and confusion. The computer is a simple device- humans are complicated.