Episode 011: "Stop Learning

I know. I know. I know. Stop Learning? That seems counterintuitive, especially from a guy that hosts a podcast called “Learn for 2”. But hear me out, what I have learned recently has changed my original thinking on the topic. It is no question that I am a big believer in educating yourself, but when is it too much? I used to think that in order to be successful, you needed to read… a lot! While I still believe that to be true, you must also execute what you’ve learned in order for it to make any significant level of impact. Recently, I was listening to a podcast by Steve Larsen. He was saying that he was in the execution phase and not the learning phase. And during this phase, he would only be reading things that solve the current problem he was having. Allowing him to focus on executing the next step, instead of focusing on the next 30 steps. He learned this “Low Information Diet” from Tim Ferris and attributes his success to it. This strategy prevents him from overwhelming himself, trying to get too many things done, instead of just focusing on the NEXT step. This of course made me feel better about my bookshelf that is littered with half-read books. I have learned more over the last 3 years than I have my entire life from these books, but I didn’t consider myself much of a reader because there so many books that I started but didn’t finish. On top of that, I belonged to a storytelling group that would make great recommendations almost daily. I couldn’t keep up with them, sometimes ordering 2 or 3 books at a time. The challenge was, I’m not a fast reader, so I felt like I was falling behind. Although, I didn’t stop learning I kept jumping from book to book, without implementing. So the things I would learn, I’d forget about because I never put them into action. Therefore wasting the knowledge I had acquired. With this idea to stop learning when the time is right, has really opened my eyes as a way to get more things accomplished. Now that I am also in the execution phase, I need to focus on executing, until a problem arises that is when I will start to learn to solve that immediate problem. I used to be so much more of a “Thinker” than a “Doer”. But with this strategy, I can force myself to take action immediately without adding more distractions. Besides, I can’t take step 22, without completing the 1st step. So if you are working on something and in the “execution phase”… Stop it! Stop Learning.