There Is No Right Way To Do Anything.
BY JON WESTENBERG
I think we all get caught up in the idea that there’s a right and a wrong way to do almost anything. The right way – it’s tried and true, it works and it’s always worked. If you follow that method, shit is going to turn up roses. The wrong way – it goes against conventional wisdom, it’s disorganised and a little chaotic. If you do anything the wrong way, it will be a complete disaster and you’ll be ridiculed.
There are cases where this is true. There’s a right way and a wrong way to land a 747. And you better pray you never end up with an experiment pilot who wants to buck the trend.
But in most cases, life isn’t a set of binaries. It’s not a selection of right option vs. wrong option. There is no one method that can guarantee success. You could follow the best advice of the best artists, entrepreneurs and writers – and still wind up failing hard.
The Rules Will Lock You In.
I’ve been known to search for the right way too. When I start a project, my first instinct used to be hitting Google and trying to uncover the correct process that would let me win. Let me succeed. Let me unlock everything I ever dreamed of.
It had a distinctly negative effect – I would find myself ignoring my gut, not playing to my strengths and following the advice of a bunch of assholes who really didn’t know more about the topic than I do.
Even when I read the advice of genuinely knowledgable and accomplished people, following it to the letter and taking it as gospel didn’t guarantee success for me. I was still hemmed in by hard and fast rules that I was terrified to disobey – as though abject and total failure was just waiting for me to stray from the path.
I’ve found the same thing has started to happen now. When I write on business and entrepreneurship I get emails from people who are trying to follow what I’ve said as though it’s one of the proverbial Ten Commandments. I know where they’re coming from and I try to explain that when I give out a way to do something – it’s just my way.
And it’s not a case of my way or the highway.
When you read about the right way and the wrong way (even in my own articles) you have got to take a step back. The most well thought out and carefully positioned advice from the best start-up investor is still only based on their experience. It’s not tailored to yours. It’s not a plug and play method, and you can’t take it that way.
The secret to following good advice is not to treat it as a religion. You have to be flexible, adaptive, innovative. You have to seek out the information and the knowledge that you can apply to your life to improve it.
You can’t be a true believer. You have to be critical and you have to be questioning. That’s the way to glean the actually useful scraps from the immortal 1,000 word blogging think piece. And the fact is, when you make the advice your own, it’s going to have much better results. Maybe you’ll find something they overlooked, discover a better path for you, acheive even greater things!
When experts present you with their tested methods, remember this: Their methods arent fool proof. And sometimes – it’s good to be the fool.
Thanks for reading — I’m Jon Westenberg. I’m an entrepreneur, writer and avid learner. I advise start-ups and investors on how to build profitable companies and operate with a small business start-up mentality. You can read more about me on my website…
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jon@jonwestenberg.com