A passion for learning is a good thing right? Any thing that helps motivate you to grow, improve and develop must be an advantage? The thing is though, that some of us have taken this to the point of addiction.
Addiction may seem a strong word, but often our desire to learn about something ends up preventing us from actually doing that thing! This may be because we don’t have any time left, because we have too much information to know where to start, or even that we have read so much about something that our desire to do it is killed off. Now I love irony, but is this incredibly frustrating.
So what are the key symptoms of a learning addiction?
- Flipping from one thing to another as soon as something new catches your attention – ever nip on to Wikipedia to check something out and wake up 30 minutes later half-way through an utterly unrelated article?
- Digging too deep on a single point – do you often find yourself checking out sites listed on page 20 of a Google search?
- Letting far to much information get to you – do you have 200 RSS feeds you read? Does the badge with the unread count play on you mind?
- Considering any time not learn, wasted time – do you only read non-fiction? Do you panic if there are only repeats on TV?
- Inability to turn down opportunities – do you attend every seminar you get an invite to? Are you unable to resist buying a book when you are in a book store?
And the solution? Well, like most things, accepting you have a problem is the first step. If you know you are a pathological learner, then you are more likely to spot when you have spent 4 hours reading productivity tips but go nothing done.
But the key is to set objectives. I like to hark back to my early school days – I have a topic I am ‘studying’ each quarter. At the end of that quarter I can review whether it deserves another quarter, or whether I move onto something else – but I can’t move onto that new thing until the end of the quarter. For each ‘topic’ I decide in advance precisely what I am aiming to learn – “learn about Productivity” is too vague and allows you to waste too much time – better is “I’ll going to implement a GTD system and then use it exclusively for this quarter”.
Most importantly though are two records of information:
- I take loads of notes using Evernote, Google Docs, etc so that I don’t waste time researching something twice; and
- I keep a list of things I want to learn more about which I add to daily. Out of this comes themes which may be topics for a quarter. I can also review items at a later date as more than half are superseded by better ideas, or loose their attraction.
And finally, whilst it can be a pain in the rear end sometimes, remember that this passion for learning is something we are very lucky to have.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi. My name is Mike, and I’m a recovering knowledgeaholic.
Ironically, number 1 got me on to your site
I use to have all the symptoms: I use to download everything because I “knew” I’d need it later, or I’d learn about it or how to do something later. I have over 3000 ebooks on my computer about every topic you can think of, because of it. In my to-do list, I have a list called “Bucket List” which houses everything I want to do before I die or, “kick the bucket”. The list originally had more than 100 things on it, but I’ve been able to get it down to about 35 items.
What I found helpful was cutting out everything that was isn’t absolutely necessary, didn’t help me out in the long run, wasted too much of my time, etc. I omitted the needless. And I had to figure out which direction I wanted to go in life, and focus on things that will complement that direction.
Hi Mike – thanks for you comment. 3,000 ebooks? That is impressive! I know what you mean about bucket lists – especially if you are strict GTD you end up having a list of the mundane which frightens you from looking at it! I’m tending towards a daily list of the minimum things I MUST do today – anything above this is a bonus.
Rich