Adam Rudd

Read. Digest. Implement == good

TLDR: Spend time digesting information. Fleshed out plans which you create are more effective than adopted solutions

Think back to a situation where you’re a complete absolute newbie. It’s your First day at work, and you have expectations for yourself on how you should perform, and how everything will be awesome as soon as you figure out this system and hop to it.

So, you get to business, adopting knowledge from everywhere you possibly can. You of course filter these methods and plans down, but, since you have such a high expectation for your blindingly sexy performance, you’re generally directly applying methods as they arrive.

I’m sure on some far away continent, this plan works out just fine. However, if you’re like me, my expectations for myself are not only unrealistic, but stick to me like chewing gum in hair. Personal deadlines pass, and the shoulders start going up with this weird ass mix of guilt and puzzlement that things didn’t work out according to la Grande plan. You’re lost.

The reason why this plan doesn’t work out so well for you, is it wasn’t written for you. These ideas written on this rather expensive bit of paper might be 100% correct. Hell, they may be the coolest, most awesomesauce ideas every made ever, BUT they’re alien concepts which need to be processed and implemented in YOUR way before they start tasting right. Right now, it’s a carob flavoured idea, with flecks of awesome dotted around like tin foil.

Oh and that right there is the best case scenario. Ideas presented to you may not even suit your role or your industry. Or, they may just suck all together. That happens you know. Trotting after concepts like a map will not only NOT take you where the author intends to you go; It’ll send you even further away from where you want to be. And then you’ll have to turn around, and start trudging back.

Ideas must be scrutinised by you because YOU are the most important part in the plan. If you’re confident in a plan because it’s yours, you can put down that book and start making calls to improve processes, or create feature concessions when vampires attack half of your coding team 3 days from Alpha. Confidence and complete understanding in your concepts and strategies makes it all work.

Be someone to be followed by consulting books and business for guidance; don’t be an over-sized Dictaphone. Yes, that may take more time, and yes, It’ll probably be worth it ;)