Struggling To Keep Up in a Hyper-Speedy World? When Do You Know Enough?

When do you know enough?

When do you know enough so you can kick back and just live on autopilot?

Is that even a thing you can do or a place you can arrive? If you ask them directly, most people will say, “Of course not!” without pausing for a thought.

What about the folks you work with? Do they know enough?

No… most of them belong on the ‘Needs More Training’ list, don’t they?

It’s easy to place ourselves in the smarter than the average bear category, but what about everyone else? It reminds me of a favorite Dave Barry quote…

The one thing that unites all human beings regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.” ― Dave Barry, Dave Barry Turns Fifty

I know I am, aren’t you?

Now throw the technology wrench into the mix. Do you know enough? Are you keeping up? Should you try? Do you even need to? All fair questions.

I will admit that only four, maybe five short years ago, I felt like I had fallen hopelessly behind in this hyper-speedy world of head-spinning technology.

I’ll be honest, it scared the crapola out of me.

It made me feel irrelevant. The only comfort was I knew I had company. Nice as that was, I didn’t want to hang around.

I’m going to attempt to make a seemingly unrelated comparison leap here. Let’s see if I can pull it off with a coherent point.

Michael, a friend and former coworker, was without a doubt considered to be the best dressed person* in the office. He had a theory on style, learning and life that went sort of like this…

Style is no different from learning or most anything else in life. People reach a point where they’re no longer comfortable trying something new. So, they stop. That’s when they start buying the same tan pants and the same blue shirts. They’ve stopped trying new things, and they’ve stopped being able to express themselves. They’ve probably stopped learning too, at least on a creative level.” — Michael Miller

Feel free to argue that clothes and fashion aren’t important, and they have nothing to do with learning. Maybe they don’t. That would be missing the point, which is simply this…

Most of us reach a place where we allow ourselves to become uncomfortable trying something new.

This question form Seths.Blog gave me pause when I read it.

When did you reach the point where you didn’t need to read another research report, didn’t need to absorb another scouting analysis, didn’t need to stop by the bookstore… because it simply wasn’t useful or efficient to learn another thing about your field?” — Seth Godin

Not because I feel like I’m at that point now, but because I was at that point. Fortunately, it scared me enough to want to do something about it.

So, I set out to change that.

Part of that journey meant accepting a few realities…

• The world keeps moving faster, while I keep moving slower. Fact of life my friends.
• It’s impossible to keep up with all there is to keep up with and you can’t, no matter how hard you try. Got that?
• There is more and more noise everyday with the sole purpose of influencing you to act in someone else’s best interest while convincing you it’s in yours. Perfectly clear, right?
• It requires staying comfortable or learning again to be comfortable with trying new things. (This might be the hardest one).
• There is never a point when it’s a good idea to let yourself stop learning. Learning is kind of like breathing.

But there is more than enough good news to offset those…

• Missed this one (whatever this one is)? Don’t worry, “There’s always another bus.” – Sir Richard Branson
• You don’t have to know all things technology, you only need to learn how to choose the technology that’s useful for you. Take the time to choose well.
• Getting comfortable with “try something and see what happens.” It works at least 80% of the time.
• You don’t need to keep up with everything, just the stuff that matters.
• And you get to decide what matters.
• Responding with the most underutilized word of our times will squelch 99.98% of the noise. The word? – “No.” Used in a sentence: No, that’s not for me. Try it out.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Oh, and…

I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.” – Maya Angelou

Be Untucked.

 

 

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* Yes, I said person instead of guy for two reasons. First, if I had said guy, that’s setting the bar too low in this case. Second, even with the ladies thrown into the mix, he still had it hands down. And the third ‘bonus’ reason is someone is sure to give me a hard time about the distinction. Gotta live bravely.