Useless Human

I think the issue is to not lose perspective. Having someone else to reassure you is helpful, although you don't want them to do stuff for you. 

But what if you are alone?

It is up to you, so you need to be aware you may feel like this, it will pass, and to be kind to yourself. You have not failed, you have just found a problem with the process.

You need to allow for the fact that being tired, hungry, in a rush, worrying about other things will affect your ability to do something, but more importantly your emotional response will differ.

I think it is useful to to step back, have a cup of tea, and think, will this matter next week, next month, in 5 years time. A lot of things which seem important at that moment, aren't really when you consider the bigger picture. 

Is there another way to do the same thing? Could you buy it from another site, go to a shop, borrow it, etc.

I the bigger picture, if you had problems with something you will not be alone. It is quite unlikely you will be the only person to have found this issue.

You can share this online, you can search for suggestions, you may even send a note to the company to say are they aware of this problem or possibility of confusion.

The people who write user guides, instructions, design user interfaces do their best (in the time they have) to make things intuitive and easy. They sometimes do user trials. But they don't think of everything and feedback helps to improve things for everyone.

So it is not that you are stupid, it's just you have found an opportunity for improvement. This should make you feel better.

If I see something I might have issues with I write down a step by step guide, so that when I do it in future it will be ok. I may not need it, or after a few times it may not be needed. It takes away the pressure and uncertainty. 

Also, some websites can get confused or time out, using the back button or editing fields too much can cause issues. Sometimes it is just a question of closing the browser and doing it again from the start and it works 1st time.

Oh great, just another effing opportuninty for growth!

I think a birthday present 5 years late isn't the right thing and the person I'm buying for may well be dead in 5 years, although I suppose that would solve the problem.

I have so many bits of paper with instructions on I lose them, I still don't learn, everytime I try and do C&P it's like the first time, going line by line through the instructions, double checking and I still lose stuff. I know I've done it before, but the memory of how is inaccessable. I've had people sit with me and go through stuff with me and it still goes wrong, like when I caused the entire colleges ability to print documents to fail, I hit print, there was some whirring and then nothing, it took the tech team ages to fix it. There's a whole massive list of things I've crashed, then theres the things I'm unable to work out. A friend got a new mouse and said I could use it if I could work out how, she refused to show me as she thought I was to dependent on being shown how to do things, others picked it up and it worked straight away from them, but not me. People laughed and were confused at how I couldn't work it out. But not as amused as the description by another friend of my first encounter with a coin release shopping trolley, I couldn't work it out at all, she was just stood there looking at me like I'd just dropped in from another planet.

Instead of using scraps of paper, have a little book. Then all the info is in one place.

While it is always possible to have problems, be careful not to only focus on the times it didn't work, forgetting all the times it did work.

Instead of using scraps of paper, have a little book. Then all the info is in one place.

While it is always possible to have problems, be careful not to only focus on the times it didn't work, forgetting all the times it did work.

I think its more remarkable for me when it does work than when it dosen't