I disliked this phrase since I was a young child. Why should a ‘Knight in Shining Armour’ always come to the rescue of the ‘Damsel in Distress’? Why not the other way around? All my life I picked my own bags, solved my own problems and earned my own cake. My reason for being fiercely independent was to never be this damsel in distress. I even learnt Martial Arts to have the valor to save some knight in trouble! I took all these efforts to avoid typecasting myself to this idiom. However, I realised that when it came to understanding ERP and applying it practically, I have been behaving like a damsel in distress for the past few months.
Rushabh has been planting me on different saviors every month, in order to manage the internal support burden. I was assigned to Umair for product understanding. However, Umair was so busy saving the outer world, that by the time he came for my help I was already under water. The next knight was Akhilesh. Thankfully, Akhilesh believed that teaching a person to swim, is more important than giving him a boat. With his efforts I learnt to stay afloat. To give Akhilesh a break and let him do his own swimming peacefully, I began to ask help from Nabin, Anand and Prakash. Anand’s rescue is so fast, that before you catch your breath you are out of the troubled water. The rescue is so lightning fast that there is no way you can figure out what really went wrong in the first place. So I began to ask Nabin’s help more often. He is one knight who is in demand all the time. The outer world, the inner world, customers, colleagues, coders, non-coders, just about everyone wishes that Nabin should come to their rescue. He is the ultimate life-guard who is the hero of Baywatch. Everybody feels safe when he comes for rescue. He seems to know every underpinnings of the sea. He knows when the tide strikes and when it is time for storms. Somehow, Nabin manages to bring everybody ashore without losing a single life. Thus, with all the knights and Nabin, I learnt to swim in these wonderful waters.
While I was happily staying afloat and also doing a couple of long strides, Rushabh came along and said , “This is not enough. We are all about “Depth”. You are not DIVING”!
It was scary to dive. I have this deep-seated fear of going underwater and not resurfacing. However at ERPNext, it is a norm to dive. So I took the plunge. This time though, I did not ask for rescue. I began to empathise with the rescue team. They are so busy saving the world and making the world a better place, that it was heartbreaking to disturb them. When at work their minds are like still waters. You do not want to throw a stone and start ripples.
Thus I learnt to swim as well as dive on my own and thankfully not be a maiden in distress. By learning to dive I have written three e-books on “How to run a complete business cycle in ERPNext?” They are a result of deep diving and not mere superficial floating. These are real-time swimming lessons by an actual learner.
Tips to not be a damsel in distress!
1. Every Time you are stuck, it is not a BUG! Check your entries, check whether you have saved and submitted the document. Check if you have spelled something wrong. Find out if you have checked the wrong boxes, selected the wrong options for your Items. You will be able to figure out what you did wrong.
2. Do not be angry on the ERP. The system is not conscious, it has no malicious intent. Neither do the coders! We all mean well. So be calm and think like a coder. Coders are very logical. Every step has a reason and every different step leads you somewhere. If you can identify the logic behind a problem, you will be able to solve it yourself.
3. Be the ERP and think like an ERP. Put yourself in the system’s place and think, why am I behaving like this? Most of the time you will know, why?
4. Happiness that comes after self-help is long-lasting as compared to ready-made help. So go ahead and be Happy!
To read my ebooks, contact Rushabh. I am certain his Robin Hood tendencies will not allow him to charge money from his people. I bet, he will give them Free!
