I don’t know the first thing about this topic I’m writing

This tool makes me think about my audacious goal of writing a two hundred page business book about workplace communication at the age of twenty three. My biggest roadblock as a first time author was a complete and utter lack of any real world business experience. Apparently working for six weeks as bartender and getting fired for accidentally dropping shards of glass in the ice bin didn’t count as relevant work experience. But as my mentor taught me, never let a little something like not knowing anything stand in your way of getting the project done. That’s when the reverse engineering strategy came into play. Turns out, you can find thousands upon thousands of studies, surveys and assessments that actual organizations use when evaluating how effectively their leaders and employees communicate in the workplace. Which means if you’re writing a book on that topic, all you have to do is skip ahead to the answer key, look for patterns among the language, separate the insights into five or so categories, convert those ideas into actionable behaviors, and then pretend like it’s the life philosophy you’ve already been practicing your whole life. It worked like a charm. Audiences slowly stopped questioning my expertise and simply assumed that my books were drawn from real life experience. Because people see what they need to see. Ultimately, that strategy resulted in my highest selling and most critically acclaimed book. To paraphrase my favorite folk songwriter, how sweet it is to be mugged by you.