There are times when you go to do something, you’ve cleared a space in the schedule, you’ve summed up the energy to start something, and then……the technology gets in the way of progress.
This a common challenge for the creative type, who is wanting to share their craft with the world. You add the content on your website, in the WordPress back end or on Rainmaker or whatever platform, then you hit preview and the picture you have added to the media gallery has suddenly become rotated 90 degrees, even though it looked perfect on your phone, or the image has suddenly scaled to HUGE, even when you had set the size to meduim 300×300. Or a whole myriad of issues.
Your create an event page, you’re really proud of your work, the content is awesome, the ticketing just right and then you hit that preview button, something goes wrong.
You want to create a table and all the code looks correct, you may have copied it from an existing page that is up and perfect, you change a bit of text, and BAM the columns won’t line up, they drop to the row below or whatever other annoying calamity.
The more you sit there and the more you fiddle around, the more the pressure rises until there is almost quiet literally steam pouring out of your ears.
There are 3 points here:
1. It is always best to simply walk away from it, do not keep trying to fix something that you are not yet skilled to fix. It is a futile exercise, that will often lead to you wasting valuable time, time that you could be creating more fab content, the thing that you are actually good at. So as soon as it doesn’t get fixed after trying a couple of simply changes, then stop.
2. Allowing an often easily resolved challenge to annoy you and potential hijack your day, again is just not worth it. Stepping away, having a walk from your desk, getting a tea or even just starting on a completely different piece of work will diffuse your annoyance, allowing you to still be productive.
Then, if you do return to the challenge, often being refreshed, will allow you to fix what you seemed not able to previously do, as you are calm.
3. Most importantly, either resolve to learn how to fix these annoying challenges, once and for all, as many times it’s a repeat of the same thing, that stumped you the last time you tried that particular thing.
Or, if you are not inclined to learn, collaborate with others, outsource or get help to do this thing. Thus freeing up your time to do what you are truly good at and also saving yourself from blowing a gasket.
I’ve taken my break writing this blog, now I am calm and off to fiddle with my new website.
Philip Dodson 