I’ve played guitar for over a decade now. Whether in a band doing original material or in a jazz band reading sheet music, memorization was obviously a key component.
During my time majoring in classical guitar, that memorization ‘muscle’ got lots of exercise. Your most important final exam in music performance is usually actual performance in front of key professors and such, so I spent lots of time playing the same song over and over and over.
An interesting thing would actually start to happen after a while: I’d believe I was playing more accurately than I actually was.
As the notes would go through my head and I’d translate them into music by thinking ahead, forming chord shapes, and moving my way through patterns in the music. There’s no time to actually think about the notes as they’re being played, because you’re focusing on ensuring that both hands are in position to handle the next several measures.
I was doing exactly what I was supposed to, but I was the wrong person to judge the output of my practice. I knew when I was playing right, but I was being graded on the way that playing actually sounded outside of my head.
This is why we ask and test.
The more familiar you become with your product or service or website, the more unqualified you become to judge it objectively. That doesn’t feel true, but it is.
It’s vital to get outside your own head and talk to other people to see if what you’re trying to do is actually coming across. It doesn’t have to be fancy—start with asking folks some simple questions:
“I’m trying to show the value of these videos I created. Do they seem worth money to you?”
“When you look at my website, what do you think I’m trying to sell?”
“You’re in sales. Does this sounds like something you’d buy? Why or why not?”
Then, you can embrace the awkward-but-wonderful thing that is user testing. You can reasonably hire someone to do this, or you can run your own scrappy testing session. Either helps! You’ll get your feelings hurt a bit, because it won’t be as easy for others as you think, but you can find valuable places to improve. For example:
“Could you walk through my website and buy this product? I want to see how easy it is to complete a purchase.”
“Can you show me how much my product costs?”
“When you load up the app, can you show me how you’d go about creating a new email?”
Certainly, this sort of research gets more scientific as you get further into it, but it’s more important that you get started sooner rather than later.
This type of research reveals the disconnect between how we think we’re doing and how we’re actually coming across—just like when I would perform my classical pieces for other music students.
You can’t buy your own product, so you’d better make sure other people are willing to! Simple research is cheap (if not free), but it’s worth almost as much as any other thing you’re doing right now.