Have you ever mastered something...become so accomplished that everyone else seeks you out for support...and then lost your edge?...
I have...and just this week I uncovered the latest area in my life where I have lost proficiency...
Let me first explain that I spent my forties working for a government agency that rarely planned...it was plagued with a series of micro-managing executives who treated most every issue as an emergency...a dysfunctional organization in which last-minute assignments were commonplace....and low-level decision-making was discouraged...which meant that almost every issue ended up in the director's office...
This is how I became an expert at using Microsoft Word...decision-makers had little time to spend truly understanding issues...problems and their solutions often had to be summarized on a single page...which led to endless editing as decision memoranda wended their way successively higher in the chain of command...back and forth...back and forth...until the content could be synthesized into five bullets or less...
I made it my mission to ferret out and become adept at every time-saving...and information rich...feature of Microsoft Word...a prized talent among my group of overworked peers...so how, you might wonder, does this have anything to do with my "dumbing down"?...
I worked in Microsoft Word today...for what I think may have been the first time since I retired four years ago...and while some skills...like riding a bike...may stay with people forever...I discovered that it's exceedingly easy to unlearn even simple features in software you don't use regularly...
I tracked changes in a document I was using to create copy for a client's website...after sending it to her for approval, she replied that she didn't know what all the markup was...or what to do with it...
My mind began racing for instructions...so I could adequately explain to her how to accept and reject changes...I was shocked when I had to resort to Word's help function...which referred me to the "Review" tab...for which there was no image by way of example...so of course I couldn't find it...until I opened the document as if I was going to be deciding what changes to retain or discard...and it finally became clear...
Chagrined?...yes...interested in recovering my former skill level?...not so much...in fact, I'm rather satisfied to know that I've jettisoned that coveted knowledge in favor of having more fun in life...
It figures that Microsoft would decide that the best way to provide help in Word is by using words...