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The art of the start
One of the Christmas presents I bought Steve this year was a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. I guess that's rather old-fashioned in today's hi-tech age but I knew that years ago, before I met him, Steve loved doing jigsaw puzzles with his kids and he really needed some encouragement to spend time away from the computer.

And just to make the jigsaw puzzle even more attractive for Steve I found one that had a train on it. I figured that would be an almost irresistible combination for Steve and I was proved right.

I've never been much of a fan of jigsaw puzzles but I had seen others working on them so I was interested to see how Steve would make a start. I know of some people who empty all the pieces out and then sort them into colors, others sort them into what they think is shown on each piece while others carefully sort through all the pieces looking for the edges.

But not Steve; once he opened the plastic bag that contained all the pieces and dumped them onto the table he didn't even wait to turn all the pieces over so that he could see what was on all of them. Instead he scratched through the pile of pieces, found each of the four corners, put them in place on the table and started from there.

In his mind he seems to have divided the jigsaw into five or six different sections and, instead of working methodically building the image he spends time adding pieces to each section. After three days of intermittent work I can see the picture beginning to emerge but at first I did wonder how on earth he was ever going to be able get anywhere near finishing it.

But then in lots of ways that's how he tackles any project that he starts. He might have all the elements of the project in front of him but often I can't see where he's going with the project until the final few days when suddenly everything slots together.

I did ask him one day how he could possibly work like that and his explanation did make some sense. From Steve's point of view most projects involve a number of different sections and he could start at the beginning and work his way through each section methodically till the project is completed but Steve finds that an approach like that can lead to boredom.

Instead, he knows what the final project will look like, he knows what will be involved in each section and bringing each section together and so he works on each section each day. By doing that he is constantly facing new challenges and there is very little room for boredom to creep in.

Of course, not every project he works on lends itself to that approach but if it does then that's the way Steve likes to work at it.

In lots of ways that approach really lends itself to anyone who is starting out in this industry. Once a newbie has the general outline in his or her head of what is required then developing each of the skills that a successful Webmaster/marketer requires in this industry is something that can be either worked on methodically or worked on in the way Steve does his jigsaw puzzles.

In fact, the more I think about it the more I like the way Steve does it. Developing your marketing skills can take a lot of time and developing your search engine optimization skills also takes a lot of time. If you were to think of it all as one project that you worked on methodically then you might never make a start.

And don't laugh at that idea, I do know of some newbies who have hung around for months - and even longer- trying to learn absolutely everything before they even wrote their first line of HTML.

If you're a newbie then by all means, spend a little time learning the basics - think of it as the time Steve spent opening the jigsaw puzzle and tipping the pieces out onto the table - but don't wait while you try to learn all there is to know about this industry before making your first gallery or free site.

Instead, jump in and start building a site while you continue to learn about not giving stuff away for free, text that sells, search engine optimization and all those other things that go to make up this industry. Spend time on each of those aspects but don't spend all your time on just one of them.

The more you work on all the aspects of this industry the less chance there is of becoming bored and, just like Steve's jigsaw, it will all come together and suddenly the big picture will be laid out before you.