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The Secret Behind Ask Leo! — I Know Less Than You Think

How my “deep dark secret” can help you

I know less than you think I do ... but I make up for it with a very important skill. And it's a skill anyone can benefit from improving.
Concept image of the six most common questions and answers on a signpost.
(Image: istockphotos.com)

Some time ago I answered a question from a reader and they responded to the answer by saying, “So easy when you know how.”

Now, I don’t know if they were making an honest observation or a snarky comment (I suspect the former), but I started thinking about what I’ll call my deep dark secret.

I didn’t know how. In fact, it’s very often that I have absolutely no clue.

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TL;DR:

Knowing versus finding

It’s not just what you know but your ability to find what you need on the fly that’s invaluable. I often don’t know the answers, but I know knowing where and how to look for them. This approach, plus a willingness to learn, turns searching for answers into a very useful skill for for many situations, not just tech.

But I know how to get a clue

When I don’t know an answer, which is often, the skill that I bring is simply this: I know is where, or how, to look, and what to look for.

I know how things more-or-less normally work and I extrapolate from there.

What I do then is test my assumptions by taking a look, perhaps experimenting a little, and thus discovering The Answer.

I didn’t know the answer. I found it.

What you know is important, but…

A certain amount of knowledge matters, of course, but it’s often not what you know that makes the difference.

What matters more — often much more — is your willingness and ability to take what you already know and build on it to discover solutions. It doesn’t work in all cases, but it works much more often than you might think.

I “know” a lot less than people think I do. I’m often just making it up as I go along. I’m really good at doing that … and all that means is that I’m very good at finding answers.

And you could be too.

Watching me in action

I had a visitor here recently and I was showing her how to do a few things on her new Windows laptop.

At times, it seemed like I really didn’t know what I was doing. I probably didn’t. As a result I’m always a little self conscious when someone’s looking over my shoulder. Yet, I ended up with the exact information that she needed.

And it’s very  true. I often don’t know what I’m doing specifically. It’s really no surprise when you think about it. I regularly switch between not only assorted versions of Windows, but also between Windows, Mac, and Linux. There are just too many specific details across everything on all those platforms to hold in my little brain.

It gets even worse because much of what I was showing (and indeed, many of the questions that I get every day) don’t apply to how I personally use my computers. These are things that I just don’t do on any regular basis. For example, I rarely run Windows File Explorer — I’m either in the command-line, or using a dual-pane Explorer replacement, xplorer2. But that doesn’t prevent me from demonstrating or answering questions about it.

It applies to programming too…

Many current and common computer programming languages are very similar to one another in many respects. Without getting in to religious debates (which programmers love to do), programming languages like Python, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, C++, and others all share many common concepts and often similar syntax that’s all derived from a common ancestor: the C programming language.

They’re similar, but definitely not identical.

Because I regularly find myself playing around with PHP, Perl, Javascript, and Python, things can get very confusing very quickly. “What’s the exact syntax for X?” and “What order do the parameters to Y go in?” are common questions that I find myself re-confirming frequently. I kind of/sort of know the answer — though I know what the answer should “look like” — but I really don’t know or have difficulty recalling the specifics because it might vary depending on exactly what I’m doing and in which language at the time.

So, instead, I know how to quickly find the answer.

Google (or Bing, or YouTube, or of late, DuckDuckGo) is my friend.

Skill trumps knowledge

Instead of exhaustive knowledge about hundreds of thousands of little details, what I have is the skill to discover — and perhaps re-discover — what I need on the fly.

Instead of knowing, I know how to find out.

With the enormous amount of information quite literally at our fingertips these days, and more arriving and changing every day, knowing how to find what you’re looking for is an incredibly valuable skill.

It could be as simple as becoming better at using search engines or the search options on various websites. Seriously, I search my own site constantly. Many of my emailed answers are nothing more than me or one of my assistants acting as a slow search engine, interpreting submitted questions and returning a link to an existing article that has the answer. Imagine how much information you could find and use more quickly with the proper search skills! And it doesn’t have to be about computers — I’ve used search techniques to help me do something as low-tech as pulling fence posts.

Being able to recognize patterns and extrapolate from them is almost as important. Earlier, I said “I know how things more-or-less normally work and I extrapolate from there.” There was nothing that pointed me explicitly to the answer. Instead, I looked at how things normally work in similar cases that I made and tested an assumption that things would work similarly in the case with which I was faced. No, it doesn’t always work (and I agree it’s frustrating when it doesn’t), but quite often it does and it can quickly lead to solutions that would otherwise remain out of reach.

Do this

Knowledge is power, and yet…

Having the ability and the skills to find what you need when you need it is more powerful still.

I strongly recommend that instead of accumulating knowledge, you invest in the skills associated with finding the knowledge you need as you need it. That could mean search engine skills, communication and terminology, or even just paying close attention to the patterns you see and then learning how to extrapolate them.

It’ll save you time, and make you much more self reliant.

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