How To Deal With Tech Overwhelm
Have you wanted to try out the latest shiny thing in tech only to stop yourself before you even start?
Maybe someone told you that you weren’t “good” with technology? Maybe you’re just super overwhelmed and don’t know where to start!
No matter what the cause you can try out that new tech even if you feel like you’re going to make a mistake the whole time.
Spoiler alert: You will make mistakes.
Learn how to deal with tech overwhelm and learn something new.
Take Small Steps
It can be easy to think you need to learn as fast as possible to catch up to others but that’s not sustainable. If you don’t want to burn out and give up, breaking up your learning into smaller steps will help.
Setting realistic goals will help with this. If you have a ton of things going on in your life like being a parent, working full time, trying to have hobbies and a social life make sure your timeline works for you.
If you only have the weekend or one week night to work on learning that works! Don’t feel guilty about not learning every day. This is the beauty of learning what you want on your own schedule.
Don’t try to be an expert overnight. Sometimes I still don’t feel like an expert and I’ve created websites for almost a decade!
Embrace the thrill of being a beginner and student again. For me it’s always refreshing to start learning everything I can about a subject I’m interested in.
Problem Solving Is Inevitable
I want things to be perfect the first time even if it’s something I’ve never done before. This is a bit unrealistic and is a form of self sabotage I’m familiar with. But that’s not how humans or anyone learns.
One of the hardest parts about learning and researching for me, even though I love doing it, is that I want a short learning curve to be an expert in as little time as possible. Then when I run into something that confuses me I get frustrated and just want to quit.
This is not the way to do it. Give yourself plenty of time to learn and take breaks. There’s nothing worse than having super tense shoulders and headache from staring at your screen for too long.
Google or your search engine of choice will be your best friend in this process. If you’re taking a course make sure to take advantage of any extra help that’s offered like office hours or FAQ sessions.
Almost anything tech related will have information about it online so no matter what you’re struggling with someone has been there. If all else fails walk away and come try again another day with a fresh perspective.
Have An End Goal
Having an end goal for you to work towards makes putting in the time and the effort worth it. This will keep you motivated to keep learning and practicing consistently.
One of my first projects was creating my own blog and portfolio hybrid site. Still active too if you want to see. For me I learn best by doing and following along with video tutorials if something is super complicated or new to me.
Your goal can be lofty or basic depending on how much time and effort you can put into it. For web design a good beginner goal could be creating a one page website. Then when you’ve mastered the landing page basics you can start adding more pages to your site.
This goal can evolve as you learn. If something that seemed too hard a few months ago is super easy you can try challenging yourself a bit more. Having a tangible product or result you can show people will make your hard work worth it.
How do I deal with tech overwhelm?
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when learning something new especially in tech. Taking small steps, leaving time for problem solving and having an project in mind will keep you on track.
If you’re ready to take tech off your to do list check out my Squarespace web design services and packages.
I’m dropping a free bundle of learning goodies next week so make sure to come back to grab these freebies if you want to learn more about web design!
