Alright, so today’s topic is a bit of a… well, it’s a weird one. Someone actually threw this title at me – you saw it – and asked me to talk about my “practice process.” Honestly, some days I just don’t know what to make of the internet, you know?
It kinda threw me for a loop, gotta say. Made me think about how things get twisted, or how sometimes you’re asked to talk about stuff that’s just… out there. But hey, a challenge is a challenge, and I guess the “practice” here is figuring out how to even approach something like this.
My Own “Practice” with Crazy Requests
This whole thing reminds me of a gig I had a while back. It wasn’t anything glamorous, just some content creation stuff to pay the bills. I was younger then, more willing to jump at anything. So, this company, a small startup, wanted me to document their “revolutionary new workflow.” That’s what they called it.
So, I show up, ready to learn all about their amazing system. They sit me down, and the guy starts explaining. And man, it was the most convoluted, backward way of doing things I’d ever seen. They were using like, five different outdated software programs that didn’t talk to each other, a bunch of spreadsheets that were constantly out of sync, and communication was mostly shouting across the office.
My “practice process” for that job became trying to make sense of the chaos. My steps were basically:
- Day 1-3: Observation. Just watching them. Trying to figure out who did what, how information (or misinformation) flowed. It was like watching a really slow, inefficient Rube Goldberg machine.
- Day 4-5: Interviews. Talking to each person. Everyone had a different idea of how things should work, and everyone blamed someone else for why it didn’t work. Lots of nodding and taking notes on my part, trying not to look too bewildered.
- Week 2: Attempting to document. This was the real nightmare. I tried to draw flowcharts, write step-by-step guides. But every time I thought I had it down, someone would say, “Oh, but on Tuesdays, if it’s raining, we do it this other way.” Seriously.
The “final realization,” as they say, was that their “revolutionary workflow” was just a fancy term for “we have no idea what we’re doing, but we’re too proud to admit it.” I wrote up this super diplomatic report, basically saying “here are some areas for potential improvement,” which was my nice way of saying “this is a hot mess.”
They paid me, I left, and I heard they folded like six months later. Not a surprise, really.
So yeah, when I get a title like the one for today’s post, it kinda brings back those memories. The “practice” isn’t about the weird title itself, but about the practice of dealing with the unexpected, the confusing, the downright bizarre requests you get in life. You just gotta roll with it, try to find some angle, and share your story, I guess.
It’s like, you’re given a strange ingredient, and you gotta figure out how to make something out of it without making a total mess. That’s the real skill, if you ask me. Not always easy, but hey, that’s life, right? Always keeping you on your toes.
