The tremendous world of online courses, blogs, social media, free eBooks, podcasts, and webinars provides the best ever opportunity to broaden your knowledge in almost every sphere you can imagine.
Thanks to technological advancement and the instant access to the internet, everyone can now study from home. It seems like it would be foolishly not to seize this opportunity and improve your skills and knowledge.
Moreover, you are kind of forced to do so since the contemporary world has raised the bar higher than ever before. It literally invited you to gather the pace and accelerate even more.
It is not surprising that, ultimately, you try to be everywhere and do everything. No doubt, you do your best to constantly gather tiny bits of information from as many channels as possible, because you are afraid that you will fall behind if you stop.
After all, you enter a learning crunch mode. You do not afford to miss anything and try to read every book you could get your hands on. You listen to every single podcast your smartphone could download and take every online course your paycheck would allow to take.
All in all, you learn. As much as possible. As intense as you manage to.
You learn how to write and publish a new book. You learn how to launch a successful blog. You learn how to hit your goal on Kickstarter. You learn how to build the next “unicorn”. You learn how to land a job of your dream. You learn how to successfully sell thousands of items on Amazon. You learn how to make millions of dollars in passive income.
However, the problem is that you do everything except taking action.
All those activities do not take you closer to the things you want to accomplish. Better knowledge does not make you more influential, powerful, and successful unless you apply it.
The key secret to success is not excessive expertise, but the ability to use it.
Knowledge is worthless unless it is applied.
Needless to say that studying is crucial. However, the thing is that it should take the entirely new form now. You should stop learning from someone else`s experiences, knowledge, failures, and wins and start learning from your own mistakes, adventures, achievements, and bold actions.
Learning has become a major trend of the 21st century. Sadly, it has also become a new form of procrastination.
You consciously postpone the first step justifying this by your eagerness to broaden the knowledge and learn new things. You put the start date off justifying this by your desire to pick up new skills that would help you succeed faster. You procrastinate over chasing your own aspirations because doing the things on your own and creating your own story of success is far more complicated than reading about someone else`s one.
Meanwhile, no one would really reproach you for wasting your time. Moreover, you feel comfortable about staying within this zone of ease and convenience forever.
However, the point is that you already have and know everything you need to start off. In fact, there is nothing more you need to learn in order to take the first step.
Embrace the truth. No matter how good your theoretical knowledge is, you will face a lot of obstacles while applying it. You will have to deal with issues that have never been described or covered in any book. You will have to look for the solutions and make the spontaneous decisions that no one probably has ever thought of. You will have to design your own road to success.
Stop learning by consuming. Start learning by creating.
Stop learning by researching. Start learning by doing.
Stop learning by listening. Start learning by talking.
Stop learning by reading. Start learning by writing.
Stop learning by watching the game. Start learning by playing it.
Stop postponing. Start taking action.
Transform your learning process from the continuous the procrastination into an unstoppable process of absorbing invaluable expertise based on your own experience.
It might seem counterintuitive, but the old-fashioned way of learning is what holds you back. This is what makes your achievements suck.
Constant learning, evaluating of ideas, thinking, and visualizing your journey towards your major aspirations will not take you far from the place you are now. Actions will.
You can sit and research, and research, and research, while someone else is already reaping huge rewards for his or her fruitful and hard work.
Stop learning now. Become bold enough to take the first step and start learning from your own experience.
This piece was originally published on Medium
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