Read the manual stupid!

I wanted to shock my readers with the topic, as that is really how I feel every now and then. My role is to educate whereby I need to learn myself something new every single day. I create educational content (videos, quizzes etc.) and I use tools that can be complex to use specifically if you do not know where to find all of the features and functionalities.

As part of my journey to educate people online, I have spent lots of time in studying the topic and looking for the best educational tools that one can use to build content and to build educational programs. I mean seriously lots of time… One of my favorite sites that I really like is Chris Lema’s educational site of WordPress and how it can be used and how to find your own productivity tools. There are plenty of other authorities on the market, but I happen to like Chris’s way to share his own experiences and he also happens to be very good from software development perspective.

I ended up selecting TechSmith Camtasia 8.0 as the foundation for all of my video production and I have used the solution for quite a few releases. The latest release is very impressive and has lots of features that it is almost impossible to figure out by just browsing through the solution. When I was running product development teams people took pride in not having to read manuals… I think that advice overall is one of the worst ones one can learn. I am now absorbing Camtasia 8 and all of its nuances by watching a top-of-the-notch educator in the solution (via video) and feel very bullish how our videos will look like going forward.

What I want you to ask yourself is how well do you know the software that you are using? Do you know how Office 2013 Outlook works and do you know how to use it in a way that makes your life easier. I doubt so. The reason why I am saying this is that I just reviewed a Udemy video of Outlook 2013 and I felt extremely ashamed of myself of not having taken the time to dig into how I work with the solution and how I could become more effective. The same applies to Camtasia video production solution. If you look at most of the videos produced with Camtasia, they are almost all just pure video recording without any additions to the features that Camtasia brings to life.

We have become lazy to really spend time to teach ourselves how to become effective in our daily lives. We are overwhelmed with too many things and the Internet and the overwhelming information flow is crippling us to focus on the most important things we need to be paying attention to. At least that is how I feel. Keep in mind that I have built quite a few international software products with my development teams and  I am supposed to know quite a bit about technology and software. I am mentioning this not to brag, but to say that my belief is that the same problem applies to many of us regardless of our background.

I want to challenge you to ask yourself how you work with your software on daily basis. Have you learned the software based on your own exploration and built your daily practice on your own assumptions of how to use it… not based on best practices or the way the software developer thought you should use it?

Have you made a decision to become more effective and focused on your “tools of choice” that becomes the foundation for your daily work. I have. We use Dynamics CRM 2011 Online and Microsoft Office 365 environment in our daily work as well as a bunch of other solutions that enables our widely distributed team to work collaboratively together.