Do you feel like your falling behind and unable to catch up? Do you have piles and piles of articles, books and magazines set aside to read? Could weighing though all that material actually makes you dumber when you think it should make you smarter?
Hi and welcome back. As we continue to discover what can help you accomplish your goals.
This week I had the opportunity to read a Ken Blanchard book call “Know Can Do”. I was impressed because it spoke to my experience with corporate training. The premise of the book is that we try to learn too much material too quickly and we end up wasting the effort that we put into learning.
They focus on the following 3 things
Information overload
We suffer from an over dose of knowledge by reading a new book, listening to a new CD or taking a new training course without taking the time to master what we already know. Are you guilty of this? We read about stock trading or real estate buying and then we read about goals and management techniques and then we pick up a book on fishing or travel or start to review vacation hotels. We flirt with many ideas and we become a generalist instead of focusing on one thing long enough to master it.
Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific. Zig Ziglar
Have you ever read the same book twice? How about 3 times? Did you ever make detailed notes about what your read? Did you try to APPLY what you learned?
Negative filtering
Did you have a hard time at school? Or do you have a hard time learning a new concept? You may be suffering from “stinkin thinking”. So you have negative attitude toward learning in general? Negative thinking will keep you back and make it hard to follow through. You will have a hard time closing the gap between knowing and doing. We all have a person in our life that is well read and knows all the “answers” but hasn’t done anything. Stuck in the paralysis of analysis they are unable to get anything started. They talk about great things but accomplish nothing. Don’t let this happen to you.
Lack of follow-up
Changing a habit is not easy. Ask anyone that has TRIED to lose weight or quit smoking. It takes a lot of concentrated effort to change a habit. Hard but fortunately not complicated. Training needs to be followed up with more training of similar material creating repetition. It needs to be reinforced over and over again. Reading a book for the 3rd or 10th time to be able to master the material instead of once and put it away.
How does this follow with our goal program? Goals are reached by doing small thing over and over again. Repetition, Repetition, Repetition will move you closer to your goal. Mastery vs familiarity.
I know it’s not as exciting as learning something new and you could fall back and become a professional learner, but is that really what you have been called to do? Is learning a bunch of new things why you started this quest? Or are you made for something bigger.
Thanks for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.
Chat soon
Percy