Poo Part I: How do you know if it’s poo?
If someone put a plate of poo cupcakes in front of you, how would you know it’s poo? Would you look at it? Feel it? Poke a fork in it? Taste it? Eat it?
The obvious answer is that you wouldn’t do any of that. You would know it’s poo because it stinks like poo. You wouldn’t even have to take a deep, appreciative smell of it. One sniff from across the room and it wouldn’t even make it to your table.
Now imagine you have no sense of smell. A plate of brown stuff arrives at your table. Now what?
You have four more senses. Listening to it is stupid. Three senses. Maybe you can see that it looks like poo. Maybe it’s gravy? You can poke it with a fork or spoon. Maybe it’s ground beef in gravy? It’s not until you taste it that you truly realize that it’s not food at all, but is, in fact, poo. A truly regrettable experience.
Not only is it a horrible experience, it’s a waste of your time. Imagine if you had to eat a bit of every brown dish to find one that isn’t poo. Sometimes you’d have to eat whole plates of it to tell if it’s poo.
If you’re a research user, every study is a plate of brown stuff. You are eating poo because you can’t smell. The rate at which plates are coming at you is astronomical. It’s your job to stay on top of it. To stay ahead of the poo. Even if you like poo, you can’t eat it all.
You can’t afford to make a client decision based on poo.
You can’t afford to be scooped because you were busy relishing a dish of poo and didn’t get to that headline in the pile.
You can’t afford deep dives into poo when time is ticking down on your thesis.
You need to develop a sense of what’s poo and what’s food so you know where to devote your energy and time.
You need a sniff test.
You need a sense that, right now, you don’t have. You want to hone that new sense to the point where you can tell if there’s even small amounts of poo in your food, purposefully tucked away where you might miss it and therefore, eat it. It shouldn’t take a lot of time. You should be able to smell poo before you have to eat it.
That’s what developing research reading skills does for you. No more poo in your food.
Learn more at http://criticalmass.ninja
