Know The Tools

In the past, I’ve written about knowing the rules. I wrote about how a friend of my Dad told me that if I were going to play the game, I had to know the rules. Well, those words are still true, but today is a bit different. Today, it’s about knowing the tools. In my case, I’m not referring to a level of competence but rather a level of expertise.

There are four tools I use with regularity. Three are free and one is a paid service. I’d been thinking of a better, faster, more effective way to accomplish a couple of tasks and posed a hypothetical to my assistant. They quickly replied with yes. Next, my assistant provided step by step directions to accomplish my desired outcome.

As I sat reading the reply, I thought to myself that I’d been using these tools, one in particular, for a couple of years and didn’t know about these features. Granted, there have been some updates to the paid tool, but even with the update, I ignore the announcement emails. If I even take the time to open the email, I skim the headline and don’t think much more about it. That’s been a costly mistake. It’s cost me time and money, one I can make more of and the other is finite.

If you’ll recall my basketball analogy. There are millions of kids around the country that play basketball in their neighborhoods or backyards. Of those there may still be millions that play in elementary and junior high school. In high school let’s say the pool drops to one million players with about 80% or 800,000 playing varsity. Of those 800,000 varsity players.

To keep going a bit, there are 1,740 NCAA men’s basketball programs in America with a little over 27 thousand participants. This includes Division One and Division Two programs. The National Basketball Association has 30 teams and each team has a maximum of 18 players during the season. Meaning of the millions of kids that play casually in their youth, only a maximum of 540 will play professionally in the NBA in any given year.

There are five starters on each of the 30 teams, so that gives us a total of 150 starters. To be considered one of the best in the league means to be selected to the All NBA team and first team All NBA team has only 10 total spots. To be one of the best of the best in this arena requires an exceptional amount of discipline, talent, fortitude, and a few other traits.

I haven’t spoken with or interviewed a single NBA player, but I can say with certainty they all know the rules of the game. They all know the tools as well. They all have a level of expertise, in regards to the game, the casual fan will never possess. After all, they’re one of only 540 to have that opportunity.

To become elite and considered at the upper echelon of your profession will require a certain level of expertise. It’ll require you applying a depth of knowledge most in your industry will never know. It’ll baffle those outside of your industry and left most dumbfounded. Unless you do what I’d been doing, casually playing in the backyard or my neighborhood.

Money follows mastery and I’ve only mastered a couple of things ever. Now I’ve chosen to embark on another quest and I’m at the Unconscious Incompetence stage of learnin

This is the first part of the entry.