Start with something you know

Decisions. Decisions. And decisions.

Lately, I have come to the conclusion that life is all about taking decisions and making choices. At each crossroad, we have to evaluate plus/minus, advantages/disadvantages, pros/cons, etc. and decide from the choices infront of us.

Being in a pseudo-creative profession, I have faced such situation quite a few times and every time I get perplexed by myriad of choices to start with. For example, when trying to solve a new problem, I tend to choose unfamiliar, complex, and fancy methods, as I like to learn new things. However, this has always proved to be detrimental to my productivity. It takes time, lot of time, to fully comprehend the output of the new fancy method for my specific problem. In the end, I have to revert back to the methods that I already know and improvise to meet the timeline.

So, one thing that I have learned through this process is that you have to start with something that you know already. Being in a familiar territory, you have more control on the output. Secondly, it forces you to be creative with what you already know, and to incrementally improve your skill set to solve the problem.