Clueless? Top 3 ways to tackle a new project
Never let being clueless stand in the way of a good plan.
I was brainstorming about how to attract the right people into my network: I like to work with self-motivated, driven go-getters who understand that we alone create our outcomes.
People who set and achieve goals.
Setting up a community to encourage discussion about goals and to help people achieve their goals seemed natural. There was just one teeny problem: I didn’t know how to do it, and I didn’t want to hire anyone else to do it. In the past, I’ve thrown money at new businesses feeling that it would create success. It didn’t. I wanted to learn from that.
For those of you not familiar with it, WordPress looks deceptively easy and user friendly. Since I’m not one to spend a lot of time trying to talk myself out of an idea that feels great and grabs me, I dove in.
Alas, I still haven’t learned all I should have from past experiences, so here’s my top 3 reminder list for next time:
1. Ask for help. Seriously, there are tons of support forums out there. USE them. I wasted countless hours and consumed much unnecessary chocolate while getting aggravated trying to figure something out. What’s worse is that even after I “discovered” the support forums (rather like Columbus “discovering” America, don’t you think?), I still had a hard time breaking the habit of muddling through. Don’t muddle. Look for help!
Brain rewired: Problem? Support forum. Problem? Support forum. Easy peasy.
More generally, whatever it is you’re trying to do — Lose weight, make more money, start a new business – people have gone there before, some boldly. Ask for help.
2. Use Google. I know: So basic. Yet when I couldn’t get WordPress to do what I wanted, I kept tinkering around with it rather than doing, for example, a simple “best wordpress business directory plugin.” It seemed so intuitive that I just knew I could figure it out. I blame it partly on being a Mac user back to the days of the Mac Classic (hmmmm….yes, that dates me).
The world is not a Mac. Not all solutions are intuitive, especially when we don’t have good knowledge base.
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3. Learn from the mistakes of others. I could have saved a LOT of time and effort had I done searches to see what other bloggers were using on their WordPress sites. Not all plugins are created equal; some just flat out create a mess.
No one wins prizes for recreating the mistakes of others or for being an island.
What have you learned from not stopping to ask for directions?
Great start. Can’t wait to read more.