Someone I knew wanted to make some extra money. I had offered work on a few of my projects before, but for one reason or another, nothing was completed.
When the person asked again, I thought I had a better idea.
Instead of offering another job, why not create an opportunity to learn something useful and get paid for it?
It sounded like a good idea to me.
Apparently, I was missing something.
A Different Approach
As an educator, I believe people learn better when they have the opportunity to experience things for themselves.
Instead of simply telling someone what to do, I prefer creating an environment where they can learn, practice, make mistakes, and develop their own understanding.
So I decided to build a web application.
The idea was simple. A small business needed help improving its online presence. The person could learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and apply that knowledge to a real website.
I designed a series of training modules. Each included reading material, a video, and an AI assistant that could answer questions.
After completing the training, the person would receive weekly tasks to apply what they had learned.
And here was the part I thought would make the opportunity even more interesting.
Both the training and the work were paid.
The person could earn money while learning a useful skill, then earn more by applying it.
I thought it was a pretty good arrangement.
Perhaps the person could eventually use those skills to help other businesses or even develop an independent source of income.
At least, that was how I saw it.
Seventeen Minutes
I spent considerable time developing the application, preparing the training, and organizing the tasks.
Everything was ready.
The person started the first training module.
And that was pretty much the end of it.
Seventeen minutes.
That was the total time spent using the application.
The first training wasn’t completed. No weekly tasks were started.
I had spent far more time building the opportunity than the person had spent exploring it.
I wasn’t expecting everything to work perfectly. There were concerns about the training, and I made adjustments to address them.
But the training remained unfinished.
I was disappointed.
I couldn’t understand why something I believed was a good opportunity had received so little attention.
Was the training too complicated? Was the subject uninteresting? Was I expecting too much?
I didn’t know.
And the more I thought about it, the more I started questioning something else.
My own approach.
Was I Solving the Right Problem?
I have noticed something about myself.
When I see a problem, I usually start thinking about how to solve it.
I use my experience, knowledge, and whatever resources I have available to develop what I believe is the best solution.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
But in this case, I realized that I might have missed an important step.
I knew the person wanted to earn money.
But did that mean they wanted to learn SEO?
Did they want structured training?
Were they interested in this kind of work?
I had answers to how the application should work, what the training should include, and how the tasks should be organized.
But I wasn’t sure I had asked enough questions about what the person actually wanted.
I was so focused on building what I thought was a good solution that I may not have spent enough time understanding the problem from the other person’s perspective.
Am I solving the problem they have, or the problem I believe they have?
So, Was It a Failure?
If I look at the original objective, yes.
I wanted to help someone learn a useful skill and earn money.
That didn’t happen.
The application worked, but the learning experience never really started.
I could try to explain why, but I would only be guessing.
What I do know is that I spent a lot of time developing a solution based on what I believed would help.
Perhaps I should have spent more time asking questions before writing a single line of code.
Would that have changed the outcome?
I don’t know.
But it might have helped me understand the situation better.
I still believe in creating opportunities for people to learn and grow. I still believe that experience is one of the best ways to learn.
What I am questioning is whether I always understand what the other person needs before trying to help.
Still Dancing
I still don’t know why the person stopped after 17 minutes. I know what I thought I was offering. I don’t know what it looked like from the other side.
To me, getting paid to learn something useful was the best part of the whole idea. But did they even want to learn SEO? That would have been a good question to ask before I built the application.
Maybe some of that is generational. Maybe two people the same age would have had the same problem. Either way, I could have asked a few more questions. I certainly had time. Look how much of it I spent building the thing.
So yes, we may be out of sync, but we’re still dancing.
Are We Really Listening?
Think about how often we try to help someone.
A parent wants to guide a child. A teacher wants to help a student. A manager wants to improve an employee’s performance. A friend wants to offer advice.
We usually have good intentions.
We draw on our own experiences and suggest what we believe will work.
But how often do we stop and ask whether the other person sees the situation the same way?
We sometimes spend more time explaining our solution than understanding their problem.
And when they don’t follow our advice, we become disappointed or frustrated.
We may even assume they don’t appreciate the opportunity.
But perhaps they simply see things differently.
I don’t believe this is about one generation being better or worse than another.
Every generation grows up with different experiences, expectations, and opportunities.
What makes perfect sense to me may not make sense to someone who has experienced life differently.
Neither perspective is automatically right or wrong.
The challenge is understanding each other.
And I have found that understanding someone else’s perspective can be much harder than explaining my own.