Journal #3

Taking on a job or task

Taking on a job or task can be harrowing, whether it be for school, work, or even a personal chore you told YOURSELF to do. The best thing about tasks that you are given as a kid up to high school is that when given a task to do, you are also given instructions, training, a module to follow. These steps to follow keep us sane in the chaos of what’s going on around us because we can depend on it to be correct and help you finish what you need to do effectively and efficiently. Even large projects like building furniture or public speaking has a module to follow to help you succeed. Even though a step by step book on building furniture may be more direct than a “10 easy steps to public speaking” article online, there are many things that give us comfort when doing something we are unfamiliar with.

I believe that for more realistic problems there needs to be training for things without steps, without training videos to watch to tell you what to do. If you are dependent on modules and explicit parameter set by another person, there is a limit to the knowledge you can gain. I believe the easiest way for me to achieve success in an ambiguous situation is to compare it to similar situations I have experienced, or research about other people’s experience, and try to pull that knowledge into my current work, even if it is not an exact repeat of what I was told. If I am told to go out and survey “some people” about how they feel about self-driving cars, I will first try to look back on any previous surveys I have had to do, and try to compare the demographic for that to my current one. If I personally have to experience, I will read articles about people who have, and tamper with their demographic to complete my task, as it proved to be beneficial.