Are You Learning Too Much?

Photo by xb3

I know this is probably going to sound contradictory to what you’ve been told but… are you learning too much?

Are you devouring anything you can get your hands on… but did nothing because you’re too busy? If you’re like most people, you’re probably “trying to learn everything you can before acting upon any anything”.

Problem is you never seem to finish learning. Pretty soon you’ve become a walking encyclopedia… a walking encyclopedia with no money for that matter.

Because for everything you learn, you look for a second opinion. You analyze it logically. You gain knowledge… but knowledge without application equals clutter - just like that college education you get.

But why are you learning so much and doing nothing?

You know that without action there’s no success.

Let me tell you why. It’s because you’re doing everything you can in your mind to not do anything.

Whoa… wait a minute. Are you saying that it’s all my fault? Blasphemy!

Hear me out here. I will show you why I think most people do this… and the very realization of the root cause might bring your business to a whole other level.

I want to introduce you to a new concept here. If this concept isn’t new to you, then perhaps the application of it is.

But before I go ahead and reveal it, I want to take some time and explain why quickly applying what you learn is utterly crucial to the success of your business…

The Speed of Implementation

Eben Pagan once cited a study about successful entrepreneurs. The finding of the study is very counter-intuitive. Ever heard the saying “Go the opposite direction of where the majority of people are heading and you’ll meet success”? Well, it couldn’t be truer here.

You see, the study introduced a new concept called “the speed of implementation”. The speed of implementation is the amount of time someone take to apply what they’ve learn.

They found that the faster the speed of implementation is, the more likely the person is to be successful. In other words, successful people take something new that they picked up and quickly apply it.

That’s right. They don’t ask for second opinion. They don’t “think about it”. They do. Do they ever fail? Sure. But that “failure” makes their action clearer to them because now they’ve got personal experience.

And from that failure, they learn the way nothing can teach you. So they soon achieve their goal because by then, they know exactly what to do and what not to do.

They don’t aim for perfection – they strive to fail fast so they can succeed fast. People who made it realized that failure is inevitable prior to success… so might as well sooner rather than later. Make sense?

That is why you have to stop learning what you’re learning now and start doing something based on what you already know or you’ll end up like a college graduate - knows a lot but does nothing.

Why You Learn Everything and Do Nothing

But why do you do this in the first place? Why do you continue learning and never doing?

Well, this is where I reveal the concept of “cognitive dissonance“. For those of you who delve into the world of psychology would have heard of it. You can skip this part and jump to the next subhead.

For those of you who haven’t, keep your eyes peeled here because understanding cognitive dissonance can not only change your business, it can change your life (again, if you apply it). No, I’m not hyping there.

You see, cognitive dissonance theory states that when you have two conflicting thoughts, you come up with self justifications to favor one thought or the other.

Let’s say you smoke. And you know smoking kills. So there are two conflicting thoughts here:

1. Smoking kills.

2. I smoke 2 packs a day.

Your self-justification to keep you sane: Smoking helps me relax and curb my appetite. Stress and obesity is also major killer therefore smoking is a good idea.

So you continue smoking even until the day you discover you’ve got lung cancer - it’s pollution that causes it, not the cigarettes.

Don’t underestimate the power of cognitive dissonance. It has allowed mass murderers, dictators and pedophile to sleep soundly at night.

So what has this got to do with not doing anything?

Well, there are two conflicting thoughts in all of us:

1. I want success (whatever that means for you).

2. I fear failure.

Those two thoughts are conflicting because you can’t achieve success, if you don’t do anything. And if you do anything, there’s a chance of failure.

So what do I do? I learn about the things I need for success and never do anything about it. My self-justification: I’m in the process of learning and preparing. I’m not ready just yet. I will start after I go through Traffic Secrets 2 because I don’t know how to drive traffic. After I finish Traffic Secrets 2, I will go through Stompernet because I don’t know SEO. And so on and so forth.

Sounds familiar?

Well, now that you know what’s going on in your mind, isn’t it easier to control your self-justifications? The next time you find yourself justifying what you’re doing, you know that’s cognitive dissonance in action.

Deep down, you know that what you’re doing is not working out and you know that the bottom line is you haven’t achieved what you set out to do.