Drinking From a Firehose
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Startups are exciting. Startups are dynamic. Startups are demanding. You have to wear many hats. Sometimes, you wear all the hats. And chances are, a lot these hats are new. So you have to learn new skills. Fast. Learn as fast as possible because the goal of the game is to continue the game. The best goal for a startup is survival.
My team and I have drank from the firehose and continue to do so. The firehose of knowledge. At the beginning, it was the blind leading the blind. We had no experience with game engines. We had no experience with art. We had no experience with audio. In fact, the company was started on a whim by watching a Gary Vaynerchuk video. And like many startups, we didn’t have the means to hire professionals to help us. All we had was a dream and our minds. We had to learn fast. And learn fast we did.
I’ve always enjoyed learning but it was learning for fun. One documentary here, another documentary there. It was a hobby. But, over the last few years I have been turning this hobby into a career. I have been refining my learning process to help me achieve my goals. Creating a process that aligns with entrepreneurship. This process has used concepts from many different areas. Let’s apply these concepts step by step to build my learning process.
The Lean Startup
In this book by Eric Ries, he discusses getting feedback on your minimum viable product (MVP). We can use this idea of seeking feedback, but thinking of the company as the product. Because the job of the leader is to create the company that creates the products. So from the perspective of the leader, the company is their product.
Back in February, I received feedback for Sailboat to establish thought leadership to help us become the leader in our space. We can use this feedback to create a problem statement: “How can Sailboat establish thought leadership?”. This is the first step.
Step 1: Seek feedback to help you identify and define a problem.
Divergent Thinking
The idea behind divergent thinking is to use creativity to generate potential solutions to a problem.
Our problem is to help Sailboat establish thought leadership. This can be done in a few ways. We could start a YouTube, a podcast, or a blog. We could do a combination of these. This is the second step.
Step 2: Explore potential solutions to the problem.
Just-In-Time
This is an inventory system that moves materials to the right place at the right time. The move happens when the material is needed. We can think of knowledge as material. And we have to move this knowledge into our minds at the right time to help us solve a problem.
Continuing with our example, I received the feedback to establish thought leadership back in February. But, I sat on this feedback for a few months. I had to wait until the time was right, and recently it was the right time. This is the third step.
Step 3: Seek knowledge at the right time to solve the problem.
Convergent Thinking
The idea behind convergent thinking is to pick one single, well established answer to a problem.
In the divergent thinking section above, we had a few solutions to pick from. A YouTube channel, a podcast, a blog, or a combination of these. I decided to start a company blog on Medium. With the purpose to share how we think, how we learn, and how we solve problems. Except, I’m not a writer. I was happy most of my university classes didn’t involve writing (and remember, we don’t have the resources to hire a professional). So I had to very quickly learn how to write in a way that was effective. Clear, engaging, and interesting. This is the fourth step.
Step 4: Decide what knowledge you need to learn to create a solution.
The Lean Startup, Again
The lean startup discusses the idea of the MVP. The minimum viable product. The minimum amount of effort required to validate an idea.
You can apply this concept to learning and come up with a minimum viable knowledge. The minimum amount of knowledge needed to create a solution. The word minimum is key since time is a precious resource, specially for startups. It would be great to take multiple courses on writing, but that’s not feasible. Instead, I watched YouTube videos. I learned the importance of literary devices. I learned the importance of repetition, repetition, and rhyme. This is the fifth step.
Step 5: Learn the minimum required to implement a solution.
Software Engineering
Software engineering has a lot of concepts, but the one we are after is called abstraction. Abstraction is the process of simplifying an object to its most basic parts. Example, you can abstract a car as a thing that gets you from point A to point B.
Why do we care about this? Because we want to remember the information we consumed in the step above. Because we need to be able to retain the new knowledge to create a solution. You can abstract the new knowledge into basic parts and see if it fits into your existing body of knowledge. These abstractions act like bridges between the old and the new. Like reasoning by analogy. This helps you retain the new knowledge.
In my case, as I was learning more about writing I thought of my math education. I thought of functions. One example of a function is y = 2x, where a number goes in and twice that number comes out. This function is a mapping from numbers to two times the numbers. In writing, I thought of it as learning the mapping of combinations of characters into images, messages, and actions. I abstracted writing to find the similarities to my math knowledge. This is the sixth step.
Step 6: Integrate the new knowledge into your existing knowledge.
Take Action
This step is to take action and apply the learnings in the form of a solution.
I applied my new knowledge of writing and started a company blog on Medium, that you are currently reading. This is the seventh step.
Step 7: Apply the new knowledge in the form of a solution.
The Lean Startup, Yet Again
A big part of the lean startup is measuring the success of the MVP and iterating as needed. We can apply this to our knowledge as well. If your new found knowledge didn’t solve the problem, go back to the first step and try again. This is the eighth step.
In our case, let me know of areas I can improve on to iterate my writing efforts. Or, let me know if you enjoyed reading this post.
Step 8: Measure the results of the solution and iterate as needed.
The Full Process
Now that we have gone through all the steps, my process for leaning is:
Step 1: Seek feedback to help you identify and define a problem.
Step 2: Explore potential solutions to the problem.
Step 3: Seek knowledge at the right time to solve the problem.
Step 4: Decide what knowledge you need to learn to create a solution.
Step 5: Learn the minimum required to implement a solution.
Step 6: Integrate the new knowledge into your existing knowledge.
Step 7: Apply the new knowledge in the form of a solution.
Step 8: Measure the results of the solution and iterate as needed.
(Step 9: Apply the learnings to the process of learning. Learn how to learn. If the new knowledge makes the process better then improve the process.)
I have used this process to learn all sorts of things. But, there is one BIG asterisk I have to mention. This process has a lot of assumptions. It assumes it’s in the context of a startup, you can’t delegate, and you have to wear many hats. This process won’t generalize to all situations. But, you might be able to adapt the ideas discussed and apply parts of it to your specific case. If you have your own learning process, I’d love to hear about it.
Happy Learning!
Gabe
