Right on.

Every few weeks, someone will ask me after I do some odd IT feat, “How did you get so good at this stuff?”

It kind of puzzles people when I reply, “I have broken more software, hardware and software installs than I can count. The reason I know how to fix all of this is that I’ve broken everything you can think of dozens of times and had to fix it because it was me or no one.”

And it’s true. That’s exactly how you get good at something, just going out and trying it. And if you’re like me, shit will get broken in the process.

And this is true, too.

Because I read a study once that demonstrated pretty conclusively that people who apply rationality in one field usually don’t transfer it to another field (such as, say, a logician might be completely unable to figure out how to change a carburetor), I’ve been trying to intentionally subvert this human tendency by being aware of it (which is the easiest way to subvert our badly-non-designed brains) and using ideas and techniques (which are just applied logical processes) learned from IT troubleshooting.

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