Overcoming Learning Paralysis to Take Action (Throwback)

Have you ever felt trapped in the endless cycle of learning without ever taking action? In this episode hear my strategies for mitigating the grip of information overload and found a way to prioritize actionable learning. This episode is a must-listen for entrepreneurs, content creators, and business professionals who find themselves constantly seeking the latest strategies but never putting them into practice. I'll uncover the pitfalls of overanalyzing and emphasize the importance of making mistakes as a critical component of learning and growth.

Chapters

• 0:03 Overcoming Learning Paralysis to Take Action
• 14:34 Review and Reflect

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:03

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Carry On Friends podcast. So today's topic is paralysis by analysis when learning hinders action. So this year as if you're, if you never heard my episode before this year I dubbed it the bus out year, and bus out again in Caribbean parlance is to step out, to break out, break away from just you know, you know, just stepping out on the scene, whatever it is. And this year I called it the bust out year because there were some things that I need to work on. Implementation and execution on ideas was key for me. This year, as opposed to the last couple of years, I've been doing some implementation, but I found that maybe 90% of my time 80 to 90% of my time I was in the gathering of information as opposed to acting on that information right. And since I've declared Bustle year and I've been intentional about implementing on things that I've learned, I've been seeing the most progress since I've started blogging back in 2013 and the podcast back in 2015. So I wanted to take this opportunity to talk to you about learning.

Speaker 0: 1:14

While it's an amazing gift that we all have an opportunity and there's so many ways and places that we can learn, it can hinder action when you gather too much information. There's information overload, and as entrepreneurs, content creators, even business professionals, we're always trying to seek out the latest and greatest information, or as much information as possible, to develop our different strategies and tips, to grow our business or to further our career. But as we're gathering information, we're not in a place of putting that information to use right, and so that gets in the way. Learning for the sake of learning will have you seeking out information that you may not need right now. You might need it someday, and then, even if you're looking for information you need right now, there's also a situation where we end up on different tangents, right. So if you've ever experienced going for a search, looking for something, and you've gone off on this other topic that seemed interesting or seemed that something that you could use for the future, and before you know it, you're down this rabbit hole, you're not sure how you got there from your initial task, and so this is the information overload. It's like what information can I put to use right now for my needs?

Speaker 0: 2:29

Right now, the blog is a biweekly podcast, and I chose that intentionally because I also consume content, and I wanted it to be biweekly because I wanted that, between the time the podcast is happening, there are things that you're learning and you have an opportunity to assess and put certain things into action, or start putting certain things into action, whichever actionable item resonates with you. And when I listen to podcasters who I like, who maybe podcast a week and some people do it daily if I should miss a day or two or a week, I feel overwhelmed by all this information that I've missed. And as an entrepreneur, a content creator, you don't want to feel like you're missing anything. You're like I got to listen to this episode because if I miss it, oh my God, there's going to be so much good information that I'm missing, and so I didn't want to overwhelm my audience. I wanted the ability to give you time to digest that information right. So with so much new information technology and strategies available, it's natural to want to learn more.

Speaker 0: 3:33

But have you ever found yourself being more overwhelmed and confused? I have. That was me last year, and you know you take one class on one topic. You see another class that seems to go deeper than the last course you've taken. I mean, I've done this too, completed one too many workbooks. There's just so many different things because we feel like it's the next best thing. But what happens is, unless we are putting that information to use, we're going to always be in the cycle of being unsure as to what we really know. If you feel like your judgment is clouded or you're more confused than you were before the last training, the last webinar, the last workbook, then you've probably done too much analysis and learning and it's time to implement what you've learned.

Speaker 0: 4:17

The other thing is that learning is not a magic or overnight solution. You know, we know what we need to know to get us to the next step and we need to make mistakes to learn, because not everything will be in a course, a book and a webinar. Everything won't be there. Specialized learning with a specific action plan, a mentor, an accountability group or a partner, a mastermind group, you'll have a better chance of success than just solely basing your information on learning from these different webinars and stuff and I'm not knocking webinars, I just want you to understand that you can consume all this information. Think of it as a sink filling up, a tub filling up with water, and if the drain is closed right, there's no way for the water to go. It's going to overflow and you're overflowing with information and not doing anything with the information that you've been retaining.

Speaker 0: 5:16

Learning is part of the journey. It's not the destination and it's ongoing, but it has to be specific for the items or the things that you need to address. Everything has to be prioritized and the learning has to be specific to what your needs are well. So, whether you're creating a podcast, a blog, it's doing that well and based on what you know. You figure out things as you go. How I am in the podcast now is not what I was a year ago. I had to learn more and do it and even in my early episodes I wanted to do a podcast for two years. It took me two years to implement. So I'm also talking from experience. I'm not just preaching, I'm talking from experience and I learned more in doing than just gathering research as to different places. How I should do a podcast, because it's only going to be what works for me.

Speaker 0: 6:10

Learning is not a bad thing. It's just that you most of your time is figuring things out as you go and making iterations and adjustments based on what works and what doesn't work, because remember, in a class you're being taught X right and some people will apply it differently and maybe get a different result, but that different result might work for them as well. Learning without action is like going to school and classes and never getting homework, never taking a quiz, never taking exam, never doing a term paper, and while we were in school we would all say, yeah, this sounds good. But as adults we know that if we didn't get a homework, a term paper, a quiz or exam, we would have no way of knowing if what we were taught or if we learned anything from what we were taught. And so it's the same thing in terms of learning, right or test is applying what we know to our situations and seeing if it works and then making adjustments from that.

Speaker 0: 7:10

A few months ago, arsha Jones of the brand Teasing the Trap sent a newsletter out and in her newsletter she says she loves to learn and she spends a lot of money on self-help products and workbooks et cetera. And she said, while it isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can be a hindrance if not kept in check. She said she spent thousands of dollars on courses, which I can relate to, but she never had the time to complete everything she learned from them all. And that's also another thing right. It costs a lot of money to do all of these courses and these webinars, and if you don't have time to complete them, then you are looking at your financial investment.

Speaker 0: 7:51

The other reason why some of us might find ourselves in a perpetual cycle of learning, it's fear, because if we are always in a place of learning, we don't get to act on the things we've learned and we're using the learning and the education as a safe place. That's more of the vulnerability of putting yourself out there. You know what if I fail and as a perfectionist, I understand that you're like, like, oh my God, how do I know that? I really know, and everything that I'm saying that do it anyway. It's like the opposite when you're operating in fear, like I want to make sure it's just right and I want to make sure it's perfect. And we will never know if it's just right or perfect until we do it In terms of what you can do. So, before you take another course, ask yourself what am I doing with the information that I'm learning? What am I going to do with it? How am I going to put this information to use?

Speaker 0: 8:50

The next time you're tempted to take another course or a webinar. Ask yourself what was the last webinar that I took? How am I implementing the things from that webinar? And how will this particular webinar or course or whatever learning initiative that you're doing, how will it help you enhance your brand? I suggest you create a plan of what you want to accomplish and when you want to accomplish that said thing. You have to create a specific learning game plan so you can get better at achieving your learning goals. That will help you take specific action you seek for your career, your business. You want to give yourself a return on investment time and ROI time right. You can't go into a course this week and say by next week, you have to be realistic with those goals to say, well, you know what, it's probably going to take me a couple months to do this, especially as solopreneurs or freelancers. When we're doing everything, we don't have a team to help us right. So you want to give yourself time to execute on what you've learned in a particular learning initiative before you jump to another one.

Speaker 0: 9:57

My last blogging conference that I spoke about that was Blogalicious last year, and last year I was very specific about what I wanted to learn and the reason why I did that because my very first conference I had no idea what I was getting into and it was blogging while brown and there was so much information and I said, okay, that was my first time, so my next time. I know that I have to go in with a strategy and a plan. There are certain things that I needed to learn and even with those two conferences, I still haven't executed half of the things that I wanted to execute. Some of them may not be as important in terms of where I am with the blog and the podcast, but it goes to show that even with a specific learning plan, it takes time to execute on all the plans. You know it takes time before you see that return on investment.

Speaker 0: 10:46

Another solution or tip is find an accountability partner, a mastermind group, or start one yourself. Right, you want to start one with someone who's gold, focus or ambitious or is a blogger like you. You collaborate whatever is effective someone to hold you accountable. So even on the days when you're like man, I don't feel like doing this, I want to do this, I don't want to do this, they can keep you in check. In my episode with Eva on work-life balance and even my collaborator, michaela, how many times have. I want to switch tracks and she's like no, this is not what you're supposed to do. That's what an accountability partner or a mastermind group does. You set goals for yourself and then you see how those goals align in a bigger picture. I have different people keeping me accountable for different goals, because they're different goals in your life, and I needed that, because if I were to do it all by myself, it would not happen. Their goal is to get me to make sure I'm sticking to the goals that I've set and help me when I get stuck and get in my own way, and that happens all the time.

Speaker 0: 11:53

So before I leave, I just wanted to recap a few things. Learning is not a magic and overnight solution. It's great to learn from all these successful entrepreneurs, but their story is an inspiration as to what could possibly work for you, and you know you get excited when you hear certain things because the ideas are flowing. Catch those ideas, write them down and map them out right and stick to them before you go into the next training initiative, unless that training initiative is going to help you and go beyond where you can't go any further on your own, and even then you want to make a plan as to what specifically I want to learn, by when I want to learn this and by when I want to execute what I've learned and apply in my business and set a realistic expectation as to when you want to see a return on investment on what you've learned. So, as I wrap up, I just wanted to reiterate that, as entrepreneurs and career professionals, learning is an amazing, amazing gift that we have, but we shouldn't let it distract us from doing the real work that needs to get done right. There's real work to be done after we learn.

Speaker 0: 13:07

This quote by William Butler Yeats said education is not the filling of the pail, but the lighting of a fire. So that fire you get when you've gone through a course and you're like, yes, this is information. It should light your fire to execute, implement and just put things into action. And you know what? Some days it's going to be hard, it's going to feel like it's not worth it. Before you even get to that point, you line up a buddy, somebody to help you, a success friend, as Julian Gordon says, to get you to where you need to be. You need help. You can't do it alone. You know the Warriors are the big thing right now. As a team, they are where they are. You need your own team.

Speaker 0: 13:45

Another quote by Paulo Coelho asked what does learning mean? Accumulating knowledge or transforming your life so you could accumulate all this knowledge? But it's the transformation, right, it's the transformation. It's not so much the acquiring of knowledge, but what are you going to do with this knowledge. So you should act. I don't want you to only consume content and only consume all this information. I want you to act At all times. I want to know, I want to help you. How can I move you to act? Are you stuck with something? You don't know where to start? Email me, hello at carryonfriendscom, tweet me at carryoncarry or at carryonfriends. I want to help you move forward.

Speaker 0: 14:34

In the next episode, I'm going to take a look back at some of the gems given and actionable advice that have been discussed on the podcast with previous guests, and I'm hoping that it will refresh your memory, because a lot of times you consume so much content that it also just disappears from our head also quickly. So it's to refresh and remind you of some of the things that we've discussed and hopefully reignite the fire that you might have experienced when you first listened to the episode and say, yes, I should be doing that Before I leave. On social media, connect with me Twitter and Instagram at Carry On Friends, and if you haven't done so, please leave us an honest review that's very helpful to the show and also share with your friends. Again, I want you to succeed. I am invested in your growth, and learning is an amazing thing, but we also want you to put what you've learned into action. And until next time, walk good.