Walking the Walk — By Tackling Photoshop
Engineering, design, and sales/marketing are the 3 core disciplines needed to get a startup launched. Personally I’m strongest in engineering with sales as a close second. The skill where I’ve always struggled the most is design.
I am embarrassed to say how many times I’ve bought Photoshop or Illustrator over the years. I’ve made it at most several days before feeling overwhelmed or getting distracted with another issue. The tools are so complex and have a lot of vocabulary that I’m completely unfamiliar with.
This is the same reaction business people have to coding or design people have to selling.
My need to use these tools resurfaced this week. I’m gearing up to produce video content for YouTube and Udemy. As I was watching a video on how to get set up, the teacher started talking about adding graphics to the videos to promote your website. He opened up Photoshop and whipped out the graphic.
I realize that now is the time to confront my issues with these tools. Sure, I could outsource this work as I have done in the past. The consequence of doing this would be the following: slower iteration and reluctance to experiment. I would ask myself is it worth the hassle before getting more work done. If I could do the basics myself, my ability to play around until I get it right goes up dramatically.
It doesn’t hurt that I’m now looking at staying home for next month or so with the current coronavirus situation. I asked myself, “What have I put off learning that I could tackle?” My answer is Photoshop and Illustrator.
I started by using the built-in tutorials in Photoshop. These showed my words and concepts that didn’t make sense to me. I jumped on YouTube and started watching videos on each concept. And of course, I am making loads of flashcards. I have no idea how many it will take to get comfortable using these tools. I’ve already made 50 and it feels like I’m just getting started.
I’ve used a similar process many times. This was how I taught myself to program when building our original website for what became Match.com. I knew almost nothing about how to do this. I created a list of what skills I needed to be able to make the project happen. Bought books for each subject (no YouTube videos in 1995.) As I read each book, I marked out each unknown concept and programming word. HTML took about 200 flashcards, TCL (webserver language) took another 300, and so on.
If I tackled 30 or 40 a day, I could muscle through each subject in 1 to 3 weeks. Pretty soon I was cranking out code and putting our idea out into the real world versus running around with a PowerPoint asking for money (i.e. permission) to get started.
I’ve repeated this process many times over the last 25 years. Each time there is a new technology, I run the same playbook.
I’ll update this as I continue my journey to document the level of effort needed to get up to speed with these two products.
Ask yourself:
- What have you put off learning that will give you an edge in your next startup idea?
- What missing skill makes you hold back on launching?
Then make a plan to conquer that skill one step at a time. My guess is that you are less than 30 days from being competent enough to make a difference.
Documentation of My Process:
Day 2 — Found just watching YouTube videos to be too random. I felt like it was learning random technique 30 which I don’t know how to relate to the overall process. Decided to buy Adobe Photoshop Classroom in a Book. It came with downloadable files I could practice with while reading the book, so very helpful. I’m still jumping on YouTube when the book mentions a tool in passing and I’m curious about more details. I will list my favorite YouTube resources tomorrow.
Day 3 — Got through chapter 4 of the book: Layer Basics. Starting to see some pattern on how to use the tool. It still feels like the first time I walked into Home Depot and wanted just one item. I wandered for an hour just trying to get the lay of the land. I’ll read a chapter, then watch an hour or two of YouTube tutorials. Here are my favorite channels so far:
Day 4 — Another chapter: Quick Fixes. Each thing I learn is still opening up huge areas of ignorance. Hopefully, this is my peak floundering day. Followed by watching 2 hours of videos on topics that were mentioned in the book but not covered extensively. I feel I can touch up photos but don’t have the confidence yet that I’ll know what tool to reach for if I see a problem.
Day 5–8 Settled into a routine of doing a single chapter a day and following up with what piques my interest. On day eight I experienced a first. I created an outline around an orange to change the color. The result wasn’t quite what the book promised but I knew what tool to use to fix. First time I wasn’t just following the recipe in the book. So to sum up, I’m making slow but steady progress. I still don’t know how long before I start feeling any level of confidence with the tool.
Day 9–13 Finished the book. I now feel confident in being able to fiddle around and get projects done in Photoshop. I ended up with 233 flashcards. I will probably follow up with another book in a week or so to extend my skills.
