If you’re like most people, you are continually bombarded with new computer programs to learn, from the simple to the complicated. It’s easy to get caught up in learning new things and forget to have the basics down first.

I was reminded of that fact the other day when one of the people in my WordPress workshop was figuring out how to manipulate what can be a fairly complicated program. He was doing well and in general conversation, mentioned that he always had a hard time finding his work when he saved it to his computer. That’s when I found out that he’d been unaware that the My Documents folder was meant to hold those files. He had been saving everything to his general hard drive, so it was much more difficult to re-locate anything later.

We went over some basics about saving to folders, saving to a memory stick, and creating folders within folders for even better organization. It made me realize how often I also start learning a new program without having the basics I need in place first. That’s why a lot of programs sat on my computer after purchasing and were never used. They were all good products, but I didn’t have the foundation to use them properly.

Did I ever tell you about my very first car? I knew how to drive, but didn’t know that I was supposed to add oil. I didn’t get to enjoy it very long, all because I didn’t have the basic knowledge to take care of it properly. Are there times in your life you went straight to the intermediate level without taking the time to begin at the beginning?

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