In this article, I am going to break down and share:
(i) Bruce Lee’s quote on learning
(ii) How to avoid decision anxiety and busyness anxiety with 2 examples
(iii) 4 steps to convert the information to our own knowledge and be able to apply them
Part 1:
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” — Bruce Lee.
Imagine if you are inspired by 10,000 different kicks, would you be able to practice each one of the kicks 10,000 times? Very unlikely right?
1) our time is limited resources.
2) our focus and attention is limited resources
3) it could take much time before we can get to know 10,000 different kicks and try each once, by then we would suffer from decision anxiety (i.e. too much choices and feeling overwhelmed when making decision)
4) no result will be obtained from practising 10,000 kicks once, we will suffer from busyness anxiety (i.e. appear to be very busy and engaged but in fact obtain little result)
Part 2:
How to avoid the decision anxiety and busyness anxiety?
Ultimate solution -> Reduce desire
How I do it:
Don’t be an inspiration collector and gather information, articles, or materials every time when you feel inspired.
Rather, ask “is this info going to move me forward towards [my goal]?”
It could be the most inspiring quote or articles or books but if it is not moving you towards your goal, it is irrelevant to you and has no value to you.
Example 1: Busyness feels good
For example, I recently read a book on motivation and feel very inspired. I have written down a lot of quotes from the book, but when I do, I reminded myself of the question “is this info going to move me forward towards [my goal]? — my goal at that time being growing business to consistent 6 figure”. The answer was a heart-breaking “no”. Despite the book being very inspiring, the reading of such book is just an escape from doing what it takes to grow the business. I was procrastinating on giving more value, upgrading the course material, fixing the funnel etc. — all the things that would move me forward. I was satisfied with myself that “I am doing something meaningful by reading this book” yet in fact I do not need to read this at the first place and it would not move me forward.
It was my crocodile brain — the most primitive part of our brain, which is responsible for our basic emotions and automatic self-preserving behaviour, that chooses the “easy thing to do” and as always, it wins over the logical part of the brain (the frontal lobe) because the primitive brain is 500 million years old while the logical part of the brain is only 500 thousand years old — the former is like a sophisticated grown up and the latter is just a baby in comparison. You can imagine their power difference over us.
Example 2: Information collector vs learner
Another example is I used to collect a lot of articles I saw from social media to Evernote. I feel like these content are useful and maybe one day I will need some of them. There was over 1000 articles over a few years saved as a result (and was still growing).
In reality, I seldom, if ever, look back at the articles collected. When I face any problems, my first instinct is to go to google (rather than my Evernote). Hence the articles are basically dusted and never used, and the effort and time of saving them were literally wasted.
Again, I was satisfied with myself that I was doing something useful by collecting useful information when I was browsing the internet and scrolling through social media. It was a way to feel good and justify the hours I spent on social media. I would feel like working and being busy rather than wasting my time, but it has no effect or impact on my growth because I never really learn from these information. I was just being a collector.
“Being inspired by everything is to gain nothing at all” — Connie C
Ask ourselves: “is this info going to move me forward towards [my goal]?” can help us to avoid traps of busyness and make better decision next time when we see something “inspiring”.
Part 3:
Information input without usage or applicator is not knowledge. To convert from information to your knowledge, you need to digest it. Like food would not become nutrients to support our activities without first digesting and processing it. We need to process and digest raw information before it can become knowledge. Without the process of digesting, we can’t absorb the information.
What does digesting involve?
(1) Determine how much nutrients the information have?
If the information is first hand information, the nutrient value tends to be higher.
If the information is fourth hand or N-hand, it has been digested many times before, the nutrient value tends to be lower.
More details are available in <How to Learn Better in the Era of Information Overwhelm? — First hand, Second hand, N-th hand information>.
This step is similar to picking the food you want to eat.
(2) Inspectional reading
If it is a book, you may refer to <Never start reading from p.1> for a checklist before reading the book.
If it is an article, or content, you may still be able to tell at a quick glance what the content is about, and tell whether this is relevant to what you want to get done, why the creator create this piece of article or content.
This quick overview style of inspectional reading will help you to get an idea about what it is and determine whether it is worth your time diving into it.
This is like chewing with your teeth — you can’t really digest here but you can break down the information and decide whether to “swallow” the information.
(3) Detailed digestion
This is the most important step in the digest and convert the information into your own knowledge. It consists of two main parts: (i) Fully focus on studying the information and then (ii) use your own words to explain the key concepts. If you could not explain it in your own words, you do not fully understand it.
(4) Output
According to the learning pyramid, if you only read, listen or watch, the learning retention rate is only 10% — 30% of the information. On the other hand, if you apply what you have learnt and teach others, the learning retention rate can be as high as 75% — 90%.
Therefore, without output (whether it be sharing what you learn or teaching others), we may forget what we have learnt in just a week or a few weeks. So outputting is the final step of digestion to ensure that after conversion from information to our own knowledge, the knowledge sticks with us so that we are able to apply it to obtain result.
To recap:
Today we talked about:
(1) Bruce Lee’s quote which is worth remembering because we should opt for practising one kick 10,000 times rather than practising 10,000 kicks once
(2) I shared two examples from my daily life to illustrate “Being inspired by everything is to gain nothing at all” — Connie C.
(3) the 4 digestion steps to turn information into your own knowledge and apply it to obtain result
That’s the end of my sharing this time, hope you benefit from it. See you in the next article!
Connie is an Active Reader, Creator to 1 framework “Sustainable Simplified Soulful”, 3 programs “Rich Brain Installation, Knowledge to Cash, Easy Passive Investing”, Author to 1 book “Design your Day: How to Achieve More in a Day than Most Do in a Year”, Host at “Simplified Business Show” podcast. She shares about book recommendations, new learnings, and principles that she learned and practised in business and life.
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