I attended every other webinar and course until I realised I had just one learning and no more
I kept signing up for every webinar and course and ending up with nothing to show for it. This post is about why spreading attention across everything leaves you with no depth, and the go-broad-then-go-deep split that finally worked for me.
Originally published on Medium.
The interplay of focus and chaos in learning
I have been in a habit of becoming excited about everything that comes my way — Artificial Intelligence, Creative Writing, Sketching, Poetry, Playing MMORPG Video Games such as World of Warcraft, Cryptocurrency, and Web development.
I see a similar pattern in my Audible playlist where I listen to too many diverse topics all the time and get confused about what to pursue. It spread from My First Million to something like The Model Health Show. When I tried to explore one thing, I wondered if it would be better to dive deep into something else.
This kept continuing until I realised that I was not going deep into any specific topic. I was all over the place. I was driven by a fear of missing out.
In fact, I had applied for a Master’s program in Computer Science back in 2021, because I did not want to miss out on something that everyone around me was doing.
It just seemed right.
Until it did not.
In finance, we often try to diversify our investments so that we can have a balanced portfolio of outcomes from our efforts. If one does not succeed, the other could give a 10x return. However, if we have our focus distributed across too many things, it restricts growth in all of them.
Thus, instead of blindly focusing on too many things, I have come up with the following strategy that works for me.
Go broad, but not all the time
I still spend around 10% of my time getting to know what is out there. I usually do this during my evening walks listening to a podcast or an audiobook. I strongly believe in the power of chaos and randomness. Sometimes, different concepts or entirely unrelated fields serendipitously intersect with each other.
Double down on a few things
The rest 90% of your time should be spent on something that matters to you. These are like the small bets you play to see what works out for you. Limiting yourself to only a couple of things gives you the ability to go deep on it. I try to restrict this to just two things at a time.
The strategy even applies to deciding what to do in a day. Previously, I used to have a huge to-do list of items to be stricken off. And I would tirelessly keep doing them one by one, in a never-ending loop until I burnt out.
However, now I have my “top two priorities” of the day. These are the two most important tasks that I need to accomplish my goals. I try to maintain a list of everything else to be done as well, just hidden a bit far away, so that it does not distract me from my primary objectives.
This also takes inspiration from the book — Eat the Frog by Brian Tracy where the author focuses on dealing with the most critical tasks early on so as to not get sidetracked with everything else.
I procrastinated on writing online for a significant period, just because I felt that I had too many things to do. However, with this article, I feel I might be able to kickstart my journey once again.
Originally published on Medium.