The best way–and often the only way–to learn skills is to put yourself in a situation where there is a great incentive to learn.
We are often attracted to the idea of learning without consequences–of quitting our jobs to go to grad school or simply to travel and read without the pressures of trying to make time for our education in a busy day of work. But this attraction to a learning-without-consequences life is almost always a siren song. If you give up your work, you will lose the incentives that push you to learn and will likely find yourself struggling to follow through on your plans.
A great example of this is the learning the discipline of organization. Many people, who have lots of free time “struggle” with procrastination. They take a while to get started with their work because they have lots of buffer time. This struggle to focus leads people to believe that they need to learn to be more disciplined and organized before they can take on more responsibilities. Since they don’t have a full plate of responsibilities, they struggle mightily to apply any of the lessons they are learning.
The way forward is not to prepare, but instead to take on more responsibilities and put yourself in a position where you will fail if you procrastinate. The risk of failure will be all the motivation you need to get more organized and you will likely find that you learn and implement a better productivity system than you ever could have by taking a course on Getting Things Done.
The best first step in learning is not to start studying but to find a situation and make a commitment that gives you the incentives to learn. It will feel a lot less comfortable than hiding away from the world and studying in isolation, but it will result in you actually developing the valuable skillset you need to prosper.
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