We are all customers too

I often am challenged or get asked how I have developed the thoughts and insights I have into certain domains even though I don't have years of work history in those spaces.

Maybe I'm just weird, or wired differently, but this always leaves me puzzled.

The reality is I'm not sitting around coming up with quadratic equations, most of the way I frame things is rooted in common sense. At the end of the day, when not at work, I am a customer / consumer too, just like everyone else.

Often I simply look at things and say, "how would I do this", "how would I make this better or less of a pain in the ass"!

It's not rocket science.

This always makes me think of some line from a movie or TV show (probably something geeky that I came across over the years because I couldn't Google it - if you know it, let me know!)

Basically the idea is that to truly understand something, you need to see it while hanging upside down in front of a mirror.

The idea is to drop your preconceptions and what you think you know, and approach it from a totally different angle than you (or everyone else) would.

Then, just test. Try. See what you can tweak or adjust. At the end of the day, we make things WAY more complicated than they need to be. 

Your brain is cool, use it.