Why is it said that reading articles about operations online is useless?

If you log on to major product operation websites every day, and basically read all the articles about operation learning, and feel that you have gained a lot and feel like you are bathed in spring breeze after reading them, then congratulations, you may be "wasted".

Can reading these articles really help you get your job done? Can I find a good job by reading these articles every day? Many times, reading these articles is useless and may even turn you into a theorist who can only talk big.

During the past few years that I have been working, I have come into contact with many new people in product operations. They save various product operation learning websites in the browser 's favorites, and they will look through them one by one when they have time at work. Then after a while, when you observe their work completion and their understanding of operations, you will find that they have not improved much. They have even learned some more extreme views and believed in them firmly, thus embarking on a path of no return.

It’s not that these articles are poorly written. On the contrary, I think some of them are very valuable. The problem often lies with the readers. You need to have a correct “way of opening” to gain “nutrition” from these articles.

How can we learn effectively and transform online articles into actual productivity? We should start from four aspects: laying a solid foundation, reading selectively, focusing on thinking, and combining it with practice.

1. Lay a solid foundation

If you want to transform these online articles into actual productivity, the first step is to lay a solid foundation, which is the most core part. You need to have an in-depth understanding of the operations of at least one product, understand every function and every detail of the product, understand the detailed work content of other operations colleagues, as well as user feedback, user attributes, etc. If you really want to continue to develop in this field, you also need to understand your competitors.

When you have a detailed understanding of these things, you will have a clear concept of operational work. At the same time, you will definitely be able to find some problems in your team's product operations. With these problems in mind, you can read articles from other operations colleagues and gain something. Find solutions to the problems and turn these online articles into actual productivity.

On the contrary, if you don’t understand your own product, you are even less likely to understand other people’s products, because you cannot access the internal data of other products and can only look at the surface from the outside. The so-called "understanding" is superficial. Talking about operations without understanding the product can only be described in two words - "bullshit".

If you do not have a certain foundation in product operation, it is recommended that you do not read these articles on the Internet. If you really want to read them, it is recommended that you arrange a time ratio, spending most of your time on laying the foundation in the early stage, and spending a small part of your time on reading these articles. Once you have a good understanding of your own product, you can consider doing some research on competing products to gain a deeper understanding of the work done upstream and downstream of the industry.

2. Selective Reading

When new operators read these articles online, they usually feel that most of the articles are okay, and a small number of them are very good. After reading it, I felt very rewarding and that this way of learning is valuable, so I should continue to learn in this way. In fact, there are some misunderstandings here. As the saying goes, "you can't chew too much." If you don't have much work experience, you should choose the field where you work or the field you are more familiar with and start focusing on learning.

Why do I recommend that everyone focus on studying? Because operational work is constantly adjusted during execution in order to find a better solution. For example, I am a Weibo operator. I read some articles about community operations every week. Although there are some things that can be applied to other areas (we will talk about this issue later), it is difficult to learn how to do community operations because you may not have a platform for practice. It's like a runner reading articles every day on how to learn to swim but never going swimming.

Operations work can be divided into several major areas. For example, we divide it into: user operations, content operations, data operations, event operations, business development operations, etc. Here we recommend that new operators learn in a "one-by-one" manner. If you read a bunch of miscellaneous things every day, in the end you will probably understand something about each area, but not in-depth enough in each area.

3. We need to think more

If you read an article to learn how to do operations, but do not think about the cases and the author's ideas in the article, then your gains are actually very small, that is, you only stay at the level of "reading it". If I ask you to tell me what you gained from reading that article two weeks later, you will probably have forgotten everything.

What we should think more about when reading is: Can the cases or author's ideas in the article be combined with our current work? If it is possible to combine, how should we do it and how should we optimize it after doing it?

When you start to get used to thinking, you will find that there are many things in life that you can learn from. Reading other people’s articles online is just one of them. Drawing inferences from one instance to another is a basic skill in operations. When you start to get used to thinking, reading some articles online will become meaningful.

4. Focus on combining with your own products

If you want to read articles meaningfully, you need to combine the articles you "read in depth" with your own products and ultimately come to a result. For example, if I read some articles this week, I will think about how the cases in the articles were successful, what methods were used, and what problems were solved. Does our product have similar problems? Can we imitate the solutions in the article? If not, what should we do?

You need to record your thoughts and come up with an operational optimization plan for your product. Once you have a plan, you need to execute it. After execution, you need to analyze the data and improve the plan. If you just read these articles and then leave them alone, then your gains are actually very small, because although you have read these articles, you have not "used" them, and thus wasted your time.

5. Conclusion

Mr. Gu Yanwu of the Ming Dynasty once said, "Empty talk will ruin the country." Operations is a job that requires strong execution, and just reading articles on the Internet will only lead to self-deception. What we need is action. First, we should implement the operation plan, then do data analysis and summary, then improve the plan, and then implement it again, so as to form a virtuous cycle. Some friends may say that they look for inspiration and read some articles on the Internet because they have no operational ideas. In fact, there is only one reason why they have no ideas: they don’t understand the product and the industry! If you have a deep understanding of the product and the industry, how can you be out of ideas?

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