Do you ever say to yourself, "If I don't know, I'll just wing it"?

I am one of those people that if I’m get something I’ve never had before (like buying something new) I always read the directions.
But I will be hesitant about jumping into something I know nothing about. Depending on what it is, I’ll try to do research on it to get as familiar as possible before diving in.
Also, there are a few things that can be a bit daunting that I am still pondering and not doing yet until I am “forced” to do it.

Not really. I remember staying at a boon docks motel one time when I was on a business trip in Louisiana. Had a couple of days to kill before I was due at my destination , so I thought I’d do some hiking in a swampy bayou area behind the motel. Just jumped right in. Only thing that brought me back to my senses was a big black centipede I saw on a log I had sat down on to rest. Hell to the no, back to the motel.

Not so much anymore, but I pretty spontaneous (read “stupidly reckless”) in a younger day. I got better after becoming a parent, but I was still pretty out there.
Now I’m just tired.

Literally 5 minuters ago. We have a gig today and the fiddle player wants to put in a new song. I’m typing up the lyrics on my other screen and trying to figure out the chords.

Yes. Out loud, too. Why hide it when we can guess it through together.

I don’t know that I’m hard and fast in either extreme category, but rather which I am varies from situation to situation. I do have the confidence to try some things that I know I’m not knowledgeable at and try to muddle/reason my way through them. And sometimes that works…and sometimes I make a mess of it.

But then there are other times where I just know I’m not qualified to do a thing and hire someone.

Nope, I never say that exactly. I’ll say “I don’t know but it won’t hurt to take a look.”

Depends on the area of wingage? And what’s at stake?

I volunteer as an art docent and often wing it. But if it’s something entirely new to me or possibly dangerous, I’d fall into the must-know-everything-first camp.

Yeah. I’m pretty confident of my ability to figure things out.

All the time. Woodworking projects always seem to just work out. This koi pond I have been working on.. not so much.

@raum

“I volunteer as an art docent and often wing it. But if it’s something entirely new to me or possibly dangerous, I’d fall into the must-know-everything-first camp.”

Same here. Taking kids on a tour of a prehistoric fauna exhibit, I’ll be flappin’ away.
Flying an airplane- 0 wingage.

I’m to scared to just wing it. I’ll ask my mom if I can, if not I’ll try my brain but it could come up with anything. I would rather ask someone for help.

I prefer to plan for certain kinds of things, but others I’ll just wing it.

@Brian1946 Ha! Agreed. Unless the plane is going down and I’m the only one conscious on the airplane.

Yes. I have nailed the “wing it” skill set.

Both. Sometimes I say that. Mostly, I prefer to figure things out to my satisfaction first. It tends to really depend what it is, and how risky or important doing it well seems to be.

Absolutely! Back when I was seriously working, my projects were all things that did not exist. It was my job to invent and create things – things that might be impossible.
If I felt the request was not violating the laws of physics I would go for it. Then I’d wing it with what I know.

@LuckyGuy – that’s now called Agile engineering: take your best guess, if it fails find the root cause, design around it, repeat.

@RocketGuy My customer only required a 25% success rate to be eligible to participate in the next round. You were expected to fail. If you found an unexpected fatal flaw you were expected to notify them within 24 hours. They would decide whether or not to continue, but would still pay for the effort.
Agile indeed!

@LuckyGuy – that’s great! In my R&D work we could get to 80% on the first try. The last 20% was always much harder. I guess we were not reaching far enough?