Overtrained and Overthinking

I recently took a number of training courses that I intended to write about. All had aspects that are relevant to LIMS but I took one course too many.

The Training

Some of you read my recent post about Non-LIMS Training where I took a variety of courses, from cybersecurity to ethical hacking to artificial intelligence and machine learning to healthcare project management.

My intentions were these:

• These were topics that I knew something about but wanted to learn more about.
• Each of these topics has relevance to our own implementations and issues.
• I thought I could then share a bit of what I’d learned. I’m always looking for new and relevant blog topics and thought these courses would easily help me add interesting topics to the list.

What Happened

I took about one course too many when I took the course on storytelling.

In that course, it talked about the power of telling a story. It illustrates how it helps prepare the reader for the rest of what you want to say. It engages them. Etcetera.

The problem I ran into is that the stories got away from me. As I began to include stories to help the user “relate” to my points, the stories took on a life of their own. As I re-read them, they didn’t seem to hit the point as well I wanted them to. They became longer, more complicated and less understandable. I continued to poke at them. They just got worse.

In any case, I’m not sure I’ll get back to trying the full storytelling experience. For now, I think I have to abandon it and continue with my usual style. On the other hand, I can tell you a little about the stories I’d tried to include, just for some context (and amusement, possibly).

Coming Up

In the next posts, I’ll make an attempt to make those posts but I give up on wordsmithing the stories to any great detail. If it doesn’t tie together the way I’d wanted, I’ve got to let it go. There’s a point where these blog posts can start taking more time than they should and I’ve let that happen, in this case.