Ask the questions

Sometimes in a new job (or even an old one) we might not want to ask questions either due to social anxiety or because of fear of looking ignorant. This can lead to a lot of trouble as we get stonewalled without needed information and appear to be 'not working'. Find a way to ask the question.

One thing I will do is ask "Can I see how you perform task X? I want to compare my own process to see if I can improve." Often this covers the fact that I am unclear on how to use a piece of software or cannot remember a particular intranet address I need to go to in order to access information.

And if you are worried about asking the same thing over and over keep cheat sheets on tasks so you can write notes down. Asking to clarify something someone said before is much better than asking them the same question over again.

Quick Memory Aide for periodic tasks

One of the things I have a major problem with is tasks that occur once a month. In the intervening 27-30 days I will forget many of the steps needed to perform the task. When they come up I often create a series of print outs with hand written notes. One job had so many that I had piles laying around until a new thought occurred to me.

Using PowerPoint and Windows built in screen capture I took snapshots of the work screens I was using and pasted them in slides in PowerPoint. Then I added notes to the slides as needed without having tons of paper laying around. Even if you do not have PowerPoint the screen capture ability is still there. Select the window in question, hit ALT-Print Screen, open up PowerPoint/Paint/Whatever and hit CTRL-V. Viola, a screen shot of what you were working on and the state it was at that moment.