So, I kept hearing this name, Jon Adkins, floating around a bit. Thought maybe there was something useful there, some practical trick or method I could pick up. You know how it is, always looking for that edge or a smarter way to do things in my own projects.
I started digging around. Fired up the computer, obviously. Spent a good chunk of time searching, trying different things.
My process went something like this:
- First, just the basic search. See what comes up. Lots of noise, really.
- Tried adding keywords related to my field. Didn’t narrow it down much in a useful way.
- Looked through forums, discussion boards. Sometimes you find gold there. Not this time. Just mentions, no real substance on how to do anything specific attributed clearly to him that I could use.
- Got frustrated. Felt like I was chasing a ghost or maybe just missing the point entirely.
What I Realized
After a while, I just stopped. It hit me – maybe focusing on a single name, looking for some magic bullet, wasn’t the way to go. It reminded me of this one time on a previous project. We were stuck, really stuck. Management heard about some fancy new technique some other company was supposedly using. They kept pushing us, “Just do it like them! It’s simple!”
Simple? It was anything but. We spent weeks trying to figure out what ‘they’ were actually doing, not just the buzzwords. Turns out, their situation was completely different. Different team size, different resources, different goals. Trying to just copy-paste their ‘solution’ was a disaster waiting to happen, and it nearly was.
We had to scrap that idea and go back to basics. Look at our problem, our tools, our people. It took longer, felt less glamorous than chasing the latest trend, but we actually built something that worked for us. It wasn’t perfect, mind you. Lots of late nights, arguments, hitting walls. But it was real progress, not just trying to mimic someone else’s highlight reel.
So, this whole Jon Adkins search thing? Kind of felt like that again. Maybe there’s something there, maybe not. But the real work isn’t finding a name, it’s the messy process of figuring things out for yourself, in your own context. It’s less about finding a guru and more about just getting your hands dirty and doing the work, step by painful step. That’s the stuff that actually sticks, anyway.
