When you get a new device or appliance or tool or software, do you need someone or a manual to walk you thru it, or do you take it on with confidence and competence that flummoxes lesser beings?
I’ll consult the owner’s manual for setup and some operation instructions, and if I get stuck in the future, I’ll pull it out again. For the most part, I’ll plunge forward and work things out for myself. Well, maybe not with power tools - I’ll check for safety warnings and such because it’s not always obvious.
Many many years ago I was timid around PCs, worried that I’d do something to take down the entire internet. Once I realized it’s not all that easy to bring everything to a crashing halt, I’d wander thru pull-downs and right-clicks and for the most part, I was able to do what I wanted to do.
And between Google and YouTube, I can find almost anything I need to know about doing what I want to do. It’s very rare that I ask a person for help. And yes, I’ve had to turn to my 6-y/o granddaughter for help with her devices. Overall, I think I’m pretty good and figuring it out for myself, with or without cussing.
It’s one of my greatest failings as a human being. I’m just good enough at understanding things to be dangerous. I will always try to figure something out myself before checking the manual. I’m not as bad about it as I used to be; but reading the directions first still feels like a waste of time despite ample evidence to the contrary.
Before I use a thing, I almost always start with a skim through the manual — the whole book or pamphlet or whatever, front to back, but not really reading it — just to confirm the thing works the way I assume it does and there won’t be any surprises. 9 times out of 10, I get to the end and say, yep, just as expected, and then I put the manual away and use the thing without further reference to the instructions, which I guess makes me reasonably handy. But that 1 time out of 10, I’m very happy I looked at the book.
Me too. I don’t try to memorize it off the bat… but later, when a question comes up, there’s enough of a residual memory to trigger the realization: oh yes, there was something about that in the manual.
I’m much like the OP… I will trying to figure it out on my own. This is especially true with software; I will click around and trying to figure it out. I have always had the belief that if formal training or a tutorial is required in order to use the software, then the software is crap.
I wouldn’t say I’m particularly adept at figuring out how mechanical things work. In fact it’s generally frustrating, and sometimes doesn’t work the first time.
Troubleshooting has always been my strong suit, although at times it fails me. The worst example is when I bought a chop saw on Amazon. Got it all assembled on its stand, but could never get it to work like I thought it should (without going into agonizing detail). Then one day I was going through my former purchases on Amazon and saw the photo of the saw in its “up” position. I didn’t know it had an “up” position, thinking I had bought a straight rip saw by mistake. It certainly resolved all my issues to find that little release button.
Depends whether I’ve had a similar item before. If I have, then I can probably work it out, and if I haven’t then a quick scoot through the manual is wise before I push a button or pull something and wreck the shiny new thing before I’ve even used it.
I’m very good at computers, electronics, and mechanical stuff. Even though I have written tons of software and used a lot of software development tools I’m still slow at learning to use application software.
Whether or not I read the manual depends on the consequences.
With a new computer, I just dive in and start clicking because it’s not like I can make it detonate or start oozing acid. But with a new car or an appliance that can cut me, I read. That said, I totally understand why people don’t like reading manuals - they are almost always poorly written and often translated awkwardly from other languages.
It’s a hard skill to describe how to do something complex step by step. I think very few companies employ people just for that purpose and instead it’s a job that goes to whoever is standing around and available.
My gf and I have come to an understanding that it is my job to assemble and “figure out” use of any new item. I then teach her and she, after doing it repeatedly, becomes adept. At one point I thought she was just being lazy, but time has shown that we actually “think differently”.
You know those IQ questions that ask you the shape something will be in once it is folded up? I know the answer immediately. My gf hasn’t a clue. For me, how to use something is often intuitively obvious but it is the exact opposite for her.
I am a software engineer, so I write the instuctions!
(Not totally true, but we do, as a team, write the requirements for a software feature, based on the usually nebulous ideas that reach us from above.
Then we write the code, present it up the line, all the while writing the documentation, until it is accepted. Our documentation IS the instructions at that point.)
I can ‘Magiver’ stuff but prefer not too. I do it a lot for broken stuff.
I’m about to ‘Magiver’ a gate that has swollen and is getting hard to close. Hmmm. Palm sander? Takes too long. Plunge saw? Same, and would leave kinda a mess. Ahh, I’ll put a wrecking blade on my sawzall and run it up and down the two pieces (gate and ‘jamb’) until it cuts out the material. It will probably only take one pass.
For new stuff, I follow instructions.
There may very well be a step that intuition misses, and you have to start from scratch.
