Success In Other Areas
There was a time when I would attend one conference a month, talking to people in my field and neighboring fields. While the conferences directly related to what I do were great for seeing friends from around the world and seeing recent progress in interesting projects, I tend to keep up to date through news and friends already. The conferences that were of the most interest to me were the ones that were only tangentially related, when I would wade through lots of fascinating information to find an amazingly useful nugget that I couldn’t have found anywhere else.
Occasionally this happens with news as well, reading an article in an unrelated but fascinating field, when a section pops up that is incredibly relevant. In the middle of an article about 10 Business Lessons Niel Patel Learned This Year, there is a section called “Customers don’t know what they want” that starts off with a quote from Steve Jobs.
You can’t just ask a customer what they want and try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.
This is a great reminder that when you ask people what they want, they will give you what they see as the most direct solution, treating a symptom. It’s always good to step back and look at the complete situation, determining the problem from outside. Address the problem that is causing the symptoms, or you will be caught in an endless game of whack-a-mole trying to solve each symptom as it pops up.