Don’t know how vs. time consuming

I think alot of people confuse these two concepts.

Not knowing how to do something may not be surmountable.  Either you learn how or you get lucky or you just do it wrong.

I’ve made a handy chart to help understand.

If you don’t know how to do something, it doesn’t matter how much time you have to do it.  I could spend all year on inventing a pill that will grow my hair back and I am not going to succeed.  However, if you ask me to take a complex issue and boil it down using a cool drawing…I can do that.  However, it may be time consuming.  I know how to do certain things, but that doesn’t mean they are easy and will take 5 minutes.

To people who don’t know how to do something, how long it takes is a mystery.  My lasik surgery 13 years ago took 5 minutes.  I had no idea.  An hour?  A day?  Who knew?  To people who don’t understand super great UX design, it is really hard to know how long it will take to deliver.  I am not an engineer although I know alot about it.  I still can’t make rhyme or reason around why certain things take a week and others take 5 minutes.  Everyone has things they can do that other people don’t understand.

I guess what I am advocating is this:  Be supportive of people who know how to do things you don’t.


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