As a consultant by profession, I have to face a completely new project almost every month, sometimes weeks. It’s challenging because I’d feel like a beginner again and won’t know what to do. In fact, I will have to learn the terminology, the industry, the work procedures, and the clients. I’m sure you’ve faced the same situation, and often would get frustrated and stressed out by the steep learning curve and tight deadlines. So how do I get up to speed? I follow these 7 powerful steps:

1) Perform a high-level overview

You need to know, see, and feel the big picture. What’s the purpose of the project? What’s the outcome? Without the bigger picture, you’d often stumble upon roadblocks during your work and wouldn’t be able to make any educated judgment as to how you should proceed.

2) Perform a detailed level overview

Once you’re done the with the big picture you’d have to drill down to the details. For instance, you know the project is to facilitate the mergers of 2 companies and the outcome would be the integration of 2 different HR systems. But you have to know your specific task, such as selecting the final system that would be used.

3) Review past workpapers

If it’s a recurring project in which had previous workpapers lying around, take a look at them to see how things were done last time. You don’t have to follow every single step exactly, but you’d have a better idea what to do overall.

If it’s a brand new project, search for the workpapers of similar projects and get a general framework. You can be a little more creative here since no one really knows what to do, so you should add or subtract as you see fit.

4) Review past documentation

Similar to step 3, be sure to look at any documentation recorded in the past. This serves as a useful guide to your current work, and most likely will save you a lot of time as you’d know what to do specifically. Well, hopefully it’s specific enough for you to make use of it.

5) Begin work

Dive in! Don’t wait until you’ve learnt everything done in the past. You’ll never be able to. Just do it and learn along the way, things will make more sense once you’re actually doing it than just philosophizing. Besides, you’d better get started before the deadlines hit!

6) Ask a lot of questions upfront

Ask many questions upfront if there’s an expert you could reach out to. I emphasize the word ‘upfront’ because as you go deeper into the work, you’re naturally expected to be more proficient too. So, take the chance to ask questions while you’re still perceived as a newbie.

Also, I’m sure you’ve heard “there’s no dumb question, just ask.” WRONG. There IS a dumb question. People don’t tell you this but they form their own opinion of you based on your questions, so think before you ask. If you could find out the answers yourself, do it. Otherwise, phrase it in such a way that shows that you’ve tried and the person you’re asking is the only person that could help you.

Note: If you ignore this, you’d be the dumb one, not the question.

7) Understand your work and make good notes

Finally, understand at least the core part of your work and make very good notes and documentation. It helps you when you have to do the same thing next time around, or if not, it’d be useful when you’re trying to teach the same thing to somebody else. You don’t want to be a newbie again, do you?

Here you go, the 7 powerful steps that you should use to get yourself up to speed, but you could always be more creative and apply the same principles in whatever you’re doing. A complete makeover of the list above:

1) Find your purpose and passion (big picture such as teaching personal development to others)

2) Determine exactly what you gonna do (specific goals and milestones such as building a blog with the intention to reach out to as many people as possible)

3) Look at successful examples (study blogs and websites that have huge traffic and community)

4) Seek out tutorials/advices from the successful examples (get their ebooks, reach out to them and ask for tips/advices)

5) Start doing what you’ve decided to do (in this case, start blogging and learn along the way)

6) Get feedback and track progress (send out survey to readers, get feedback from friends/bloggers, track progress with specific milestones)

7) Understand what you’re doing and record important activities (understand what blogging is all about and keep track of useful websites and lessons)

How do you learn something new? Share your tips and advices with us.

Popularity: 2% [?]