Glenn's blog

I sometimes hear people say "I don't know how to do that" when they are asked to take on a task. Is this just a way of passing it off or making an excuse to get out of the work?

Photo by sheila_blige

None of us start off knowing how to do much of anything, except maybe grabbing things and sucking. Those are pretty instinctual. But everything else we learn how to do. Skills like reading, walking, talking, typing, using a telephone, driving a car, riding a bicycle, and so on. We learn how to do new things all the time.

But, strangely, there often seems to be some sort of block when we are asked to stretch our knowledge a bit and teach ourselves how to do something slightly complex. It's almost as if we spend a bunch of our life learning how to do things, and then we forget that knowledge is not absolute. We start to think that if we don't know something now, then it's not worth knowing or that we aren't capable of learning it.

It might just be that a lot of what I know I learned on my own so maybe I have less of an idea of knowing something and more of an appreciation for learning new things.

When someone says "I don't know how" what I hear is "I don't care about that enough to learn how." I really think it's all about caring enough to stretch our knowledge to learn enough to get things done. Learn how to update your website, edit HTML, bake cupcakes, talk to people on the street about animal rights, give presentations, and so on. These are not impossible tasks, and if you care enough, just take some time to learn.