Knowledge Isn’t Power!

“As soon as I finish this course, I’ll be able to start–”

STOP! If you’ve ever found yourself saying the above phrase in response to someone asking you why you’ve not started on a project yet, I want you to join me in saying the following sentence out loud.

“I will never, ever, EVER, spend time, money or energy again on knowledge I don’t really need, for the sole purpose of putting off a daunting task.”

Yes, I said it out loud, too.

“But Knowledge is power!”

Sorry (not sorry) to bust this myth, but in the context of Entrepreneurialism, knowledge ranks very little on the ‘how to be awesome’ meter. Execution is power, and knowledge should be seen as a route to more effective execution. But how often have we taken courses that fill our head with more information than we need at that moment, only to wander away — info-dazed — and not really put into practice what we learned?

It’s the Entrepreneurial equivalent of that mathematics lesson at school for figuring out the root of a square on its axes every second Tuesday.

More Issues With Over-Learning

• Time-Suck: Why spend hours upon hours learning something you don’t need right now, when you could be making progress on the projects that will actually move your business forward?
• Choice paralysis/Info-Daze: Too much information from too many different sources can leave you more lost than when you started! Everyone will have a slightly different approach to prioritization, and even when it’s universally agreed, (e.g. email list!) you’re going to have ten different ways of doing the same thing.
• Theory only (no practical effects): Just because I can read about how to get a 6-figure income doesn’t mean I can turn around and implement everything the next day, and be sipping Gin & Tonics next week. Sometimes, even the best information can be utterly useless if it doesn’t fit exactly what you need in the moment.
• Procrastination: Step back from the rabbit hole, Alice! Have you ever started a course on something, heard a new term, and then immediately went to do a search for info on that? And all the while that time is just ticking…

And that doesn’t even include the rant I wanted to make about the impossibility of knowing everything about a subject anyway — especially in the digital world where everything is constantly changing.

But all the Gurus say that self-improvement is key!

Yes, it is. But not at the cost of actually getting sh*t done! And as far as I’m aware, they all say that doing something is much better than just talking about it. Read that book everyone’s recommended, but do it on your own time, and don’t pretend it’s going to help your business move a single inch by itself.

Learning for the love of it is fine, but stop pretending you ‘need’ to complete XYZ course before you do ABC. If this is something you struggle with, then you need to figure out why you’re procrastinating in the first place — I can guarantee that 9/10 times, it isn’t because you don’t know enough!

“So how do I know when to stop?”

Like everything, this kind of self-discipline takes practice, especially when you’re super-interested in the subject matter. The best way to do this is to consider the goal and reverse engineer from there. Here’s a good 3-step guide.

• Figure out specifically what you need to learn in order to complete a specific task. (Ask yourself ‘’I need to…’ and ‘so that…’).
• Learn about that thing — take notes where necessary
• Stop & implement

Example:

• I need to learn how to optimize my blog posts for conversion, so that I can get more clients to my 1:1 program.
• *Learns about very specific thing*
• *Implements what she’s learned*

“What if I’m the Infopreneur? I’m not evil!”

Don’t worry, I have my own course, too! And it might not be the most polished thing out there in terms of a full lighting rig and shiny camera setup, but my course does a number of things right:

1. It caters for a specific need (improving your online engagement) for a specific outcome (so people buy your products).
2. It doesn’t take six months of your life to wade through information that’s not going to help you right now. (The videos are short and altogether last around 2.5 hours)
3. Action points! PDFs that make you implement right now, so there’s no procrastination opportunity.

All in all, it can be super tempting to dive in without thinking about your end goal. I get it. But if you want real results (for yourself or for your clients/buyers/fans) then you’ve gotta get sh*t done!