I’m about to reveal two biggest IT secrets ever. These secrets are how IT people all over the world solve your problems and make you think of them as super-geniuses from the 8th dimension. Once you know these secrets, you too can use their power to solve problems and look super awesome.
How to Google
The true secret of IT people is that we’re very good at Googling. I’ve been doing it since the late 90s, when you needed surgical precision in how you came up with queries to find meaningful results. These days Google is very good at figuring out the gist of your meaning, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get better.
- Google error messages. It sometimes helps to tell Google that you’re typing it verbatim, so “Put your query in quotes.”
- Often, I will Google something, and then open the first 5-7 links in new tabs in my browser. I have gotten very good at going through them and finding whether they are a person describing an issue similar to mine, or one that merely appeared similar from the Google summary. I also discard forum posts that don’t seem like anyone found a solution to the problem. Sometimes these can give you other things to search for, but often they’re dead ends.
- Be specific. If you’re having trouble getting Outlook to open, don’t Google “email problem.” Google instead something like “Outlook 2013 stuck on splash screen” or “Outlook 2010 froze on logo.”
- If you think you might have more info to search for, but don’t quite remember it or know how to find it, you can search for “how to find X,” such as “How to find Windows version” or “What is an Outlook profile?”
How to solve problems and follow processes
When most people run into an error they don’t understand, they will do one of three things: Read the message and then click “OK” and see if they can continue; Immediately stop and find someone more technically knowledgeable; or Click “OK” without reading anything. This is probably shaded by how busy they might be, how much damage they think the issue could create, and how often they encounter issues. If you see an error on a $5000 office printer, you might be inclined to seek some help, while if your email tells you it has trouble connecting, but when you click OK everything seems fine, you’ll probably assume it was a temporary issue.
Much like a doctor in an emergency room, knowing how to triage and categorize problems is the kind of skill that is easy to learn, but takes a lot of experience to master. A good rule of thumb is the following:
- When was the last time I rebooted my computer, or restarted this program? (Seriously, the number of problems that can solved with a simple reboot are staggering.)
- Is the problem just affecting me, or are others affected? If others are affected, was it at the same time?
- Does the issue appear to be hardware or software? How might I test this?
- Has this happened before, and if so, what might be in common with that?
- Is there an alternative way to do what I’m trying to do, and if so does that also produce this problem? If not, perhaps notify someone and use the alternate way until it’s fixed.
- What does Googling the problem tell me? Is it common, are there a bunch of posts with similarly vague issues? If so, how can I make my search more specific?
The more you do this, the better you will become at identifying issues from a few vague clues, and the more likely you’ll be to solve some issues on your own. Additionally, you’ll be better able to separate problems into their parts, and will find that when you do need help, you’re much better able to explain the problem to your IT, your doctor, your mechanic, and your barber. And we will all thank you for helping to make our lives easier, and not receiving another email that simply reads “My email is broken.”