When someone comes to me with an IT problem I have the sometimes daunting task of trying to find a solution for them. The majority of the time I then have to try and figure out what might have caused this problem in the first place. Sometimes it’s obvious to me – I’ve seen it before or there’s some clear logic to it.
Other times it’s painfully complex. (The staff in Nottingham will testify to several occasions of close to hair ripping out moments.) A combination of huge frustration with a small amount of intrigue keeps me trying to figure it out. But sometimes it gets to the point when a solution is more important than an explanation of what caused it in the first place! (You’ll have all heard me say just try a reboot and see whether that fixes it – this is when it gets to the point that I just need to get you up and running again.)
Why am I telling you all this, when I’m sure many of you just care about getting the problem sorted and making sure that it doesn’t happen again any time soon? Well I think sometimes we can do the same thing with personal issues – spending too long trying to figure out what we might have done wrong.
I’ve been really challenged recently about not focusing too much on the past. There’s no doubt that we can learn from our mistakes but if we dwell on them too much we’ll be crippled by them and they will prevent us from being able to achieve all that we can. So once we’ve learnt our lesson we turn around and focus on the road ahead, with all the challenges that it holds for us. (Because as far as I’m aware there’s only one man who can run whilst looking behind him –Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt, see picture below.)
On a lighter note I thought I might be able to slip in another clip from the IT Crowd, in light of recent news about piracy.
