Ok. Previously we’ve covered 3 of the 4 main mistakes I see people make when preparing for a Six Sigma exam – and how to solve for them. If you missed those emails, let me know and I’ll re-send them.
- Mistake #1: Not Knowing What is on the Exam
- Mistake #2: No familiarity with how questions are actually asked on the exam.
- Mistake #3: Trying to study everything all at once.
Now it’s time to cover the last mistake:
Trying to do everything by yourself.
But first, a story.
A few years after college I bought a house. And because it was just a few years after college I had a college loan, and a car loan, and a computer loan….
Making matters even more entertaining the house was.. well, it hadn’t been lived in for a long, long time. Perhaps the most charitable way of describing it was the house needed a lot of work.
There I was drowning in debt residing in a dilapidated house that I was struggling to afford. So I did the only rationale thing; I hired a house keeper.
I know. How could spending even more money … on something I could have easily done myself… be considered remotely rationale?
Allow me to explain.
In order to retire my debt I had taken on website creation gigs on the site. I’d build a website, get paid, and pay off some debt. All of this started when a guy who wanted to sell me gutters (which the house sorely needed) worked out a trade with me; website for gutters.
The problem was that I kept thinking I was too busy to build websites for people. I already had a full-time job AND I was going to school at night. Plus the house was literally falling apart.
When was I going to get time to do build websites for people?
The answer was counter-intuitive but in retrospect obvious; I had to focus on the most important things.
That meant I had to stop doing anything that wasn’t the highest and best use of my time.
So I made a list of everything that I was doing that other people could be doing – likely better and quicker than I was.
And that’s when I came up with housekeeping. As a new owner I was very, very proud of my house – despite it being in the words of my friends and family “the closest you could come to camping out indoors.”
I took all the time I was spending cleaning the house and fixing the house and I put it towards making websites. Any time I wasn’t spending there I put towards working on my graduate school degree. Sometimes I’d finish a semester’s worth of work in a month. Sometimes I’d start studying for the courses I’d take the next semester.
The websites “paid” for the housekeeping and the fixing. All of that extra experience building websites and aggressively pursuing a graduate degree made me much more valuable at work.
My ‘team’ benefitted, too. The contractors that bartered with me got great websites that they used to improve their business. My housekeeper used my gig to pay for her schooling.
Conventional Wisdom Was Wrong
Conventional wisdom would have had me cut off all expenditures (housekeeping, home improvements, graduate school).
Conventional wisdom would have been wrong.
Yes, I would have eventually retired my debts but look at what I would have missed.
Had I not built a team and contracted others to help me I would NOT have been able to:
- Improve my skill sets.
- Dramatically raise the value of my home.
- Earn a Master of Science degree.
- Earn multiple raises.
Did it take a leap of faith? Yes.
Was I totally comfortable the whole time? Absolutely not.
Would I recommend a similar approach to everyone else? 100%
How to Apply this to Studying for a Six Sigma Exam
If you haven’t leveraged a team in order to get your certification faster, you may missing out on:
- A new career.
- A greater toolset to make dramatic and necessary changes for your clients, customers, and company.
- The raises and bonuses achieving these things bring.
- Spending time doing anything else (date night with your spouse, play dates with your kids, a relaxing bath and glass of wine – really anything is better than locking yourself away like a hermit to study isn’t it?)
- The simple satisfaction of achieving something difficult that many, many people do not follow up on.
The longer you put off getting certified – and the longer you take to get certified – the more you’ll go without. And the effects compound overtime.
Next Time
Next time I’ll list a bunch of studying practices you’re likely doing that could easily be given to others or otherwise automated or made easier for you.
In the meantime, hit reply and let me know what’s taking up an inordinate amount of the time you’d like to spend studying. Also let me know what you could stop doing right now or assign to others that would let you get through the material quicker.
Best, Ted.