Have you ever wanted to build something or learn a new skill but didn’t know what steps to take to reach your goal?
This could be building a computer, learning how to draw, getting into grad school, starting a business, interviewing for a job, improving your fitness, or any number of things. You know the end goal, but the middle part isn’t clear, and you don’t know where to start.
Don’t worry; this is a normal feeling. The best method I’ve found for figuring anything out is to deconstruct what I’m trying to accomplish.
Deconstruction is a method of breaking something down into manageable chunks so you can more easily understand it.
If you want to learn a new skill, you can break it down into individual sub-skills to practice. The same idea applies to building things. You can break down the process and materials you’ll need to complete the building project.
Deconstruction is a process you can use to achieve your goals even if you don’t have any previous knowledge or experience. By breaking something down, you force yourself to organize your thoughts to focus on what matters.
Steps to Deconstruct Anything
- Objective
- Deconstruct
- Research
- Reconstruct
1. Objective
What do you want to accomplish? What are you trying to figure out how to do? Having an objective or goal focuses your efforts.
The more specific you can be, the better. However, if your goal is vague to start, don’t worry. You can refine as you learn more in the next stages.
For instance, you may start with the goal of getting in shape. As you do more research, you may come back and refine this to lose 10 pounds in 6 months or run a 5k in 3 months.
Here are some examples of goals you could set:
- Build a computer
- Get accepted into grad school
- Learn how to draw
- Build a garage
- Run a marathon
- Buy a house
- Start an eCommerce business
- Learn how to golf
2. Deconstruct
Deconstruction is about breaking your objective down into its key components. It forces you to analyze and think critically about the objective. The analysis you perform is an essential piece of the learning that takes place during deconstruction.
When you deconstruct something, start one layer at a time. This may feel simplistic, but breaking things down one layer at a time will help keep your deconstruction process organized.
There is always the temptation to think you need to know everything about a topic before you can deconstruct it. Resist that urge. Mastery can come later. For now, focus on finding those key components. You can always come back and break it down further later.
Guiding questions:
- What are the essential parts that make this up?
- How can I group my objective into subcategories?
- What are the steps in the process?
Continue breaking down your goal until you have an individual component to focus on. Simplifying your goal into subcategories will make figuring things out less overwhelming.
If you get stuck, ask yourself, “What else do I need to know?”
3. Research
Now that you’ve broken your objective down into manageable chunks, it is time to fill in knowledge gaps.
The purpose of research within deconstruction is exploration. Research helps you become more familiar with a topic.
Research helps you develop the knowledge and understanding required to accomplish your goal. It builds on the foundational deconstruction work you’ve completed and enables you to build a personalized learning curriculum.
Here are some examples of how you can research your topic:
- Search Google or YouTube for “How to [insert goal here]” or “Learn [insert skill] in [time period]” (Ex: Learn how to draw in 1 month)
- Find an expert or someone with experience in your area of interest. Talk with them or see if they have shared any relevant content online.
- Read a book on the topic.
Set a research goal of reading five articles or watching five videos on your topic. Take notes and move on. If you’re not careful, you may find yourself saying, “I just need to watch one more video, and everything will make sense.”
4. Reconstruct
Taking something apart is a great way to learn, but the real challenge comes with putting it back together.
Think of reconstruction as a test of your understanding. To do well, you need to have a good understanding of everything you’ve learned through the deconstruction process and see how all the pieces fit together.
Application: Putting it All Together
You’ve done all the upfront work needed to accomplish your objective. Now it is time to put everything away and use what you’ve learned to take action.
You can know everything there is to know about running a marathon, but you won’t achieve your goal until you apply what you’ve learned. Application is the transformation of theoretical knowledge into practical experience.
The best part is that you’ll continue to learn as you take action. The magic of getting started is you can discover as you go. You will make more progress and learn more about your objective if you get started than you would if you only spend more time researching.
Here is an example of how I deconstructed writing articles:
- Objective – My goal was to learn how to write blog-post style articles.
- Deconstruct – I broke writing down into a few subcategories and skills, including research, writing, editing, publishing. I continued to deconstruct each skill until I had more manageable chunks to focus on.
- Research → reading, note-taking, Evernote.
- Writing → outlining, storytelling, style, clutter, language, audience.
- Editing → grammar, formatting, flow, sentence structure, process.
- Publishing → schedules, WordPress, SEO.
- Research – I dove into books on how to write well, watched videos on how to structure my research process, and read articles on what to look for when editing articles. With each subskill, my goal was to consume a few different information sources so I can compare and contrast them. This helped give me a more holistic view of each topic and learn about best practices.
- Reconstruction – Once I completed my initial research on each component, I created an overview of the writing process. This overview serves as a reference guide for any time I start the process of writing an article.
The more I write articles, the more I learn about what works. As I apply what I’ve learned through deconstruction, I’m gaining practical experience to continue to improve as a writer.
You can apply deconstruction to anything. You can use the process more than once as you come up with new questions and goals. Anytime you want to figure something out, you can always deconstruct it.