Episode 1024: How to Avoid Learning to Avoid Doing

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1024 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Catherine Cantey: I'm Catherine Cantey. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to lead yourself and others is key.

[00:00:24] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:33] Scott Maderer: even before we feel completely ready, but we're ready enough to start putting something out. The other benefit of this is often you get feedback from doing that allows you to then focus your. So instead of having to learn everything, you end up being able to focus your learning on exactly what you need to know.

[00:00:56] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired [00:01:00] stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to do. Then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:23] And today's episode about investing in others through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about how we often avoid doing things by learning things I share why this isn't really a good thing. And I also share some tips on what you can do instead. You've heard me talk about developing your talent and what are the best ways to do that is through books.

[00:01:46] But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up [00:02:00] and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via.

[00:02:13] That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. There's a reason that the slogan of Nike isn't just learn it, but rather just do it. It's because learning is one of those things that we can often use in a way that lets us avoid.

[00:02:40] Doing, we can spend hours and hours deciding that we just need to learn one more thing before we're ready to actually do it right. And don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that you just randomly start doing something without any preparation, without any [00:03:00] training, without learning something about it.

[00:03:03] But we often get trapped into learning as a way to avoid. That's because in some ways learning feels safe, it feels like it has no risk. It feels like you're actually accomplishing something because I spending all of this time learning and therefore I'm making progress. And yet there's no risk involved.

[00:03:29] I don't have to put anything out into the world where people can see it. I don't have to let others critique my work. I don't have to actually produce anything. Learning is tempting. It's a kind of a trap because it's hard to fail at it and it makes it a place that we can use to hide. From the important work that we should be doing work that often comes with risk with a feeling of possibly being able to do it wrong.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] A feeling of being critiqued, a feeling of being pointed out as someone who maybe didn't do it a hundred percent right. Doing is risky learning it, even though sometimes it feels hard and it convinces us. We're making progress. It doesn't have that risk to our confidence, to our ego or to our dreams.

[00:04:26] That's why we often are tempted to spend so much of our time learning instead of doing something if you are going to be learning. There's a couple of things that I would recommend. One is looking at doing it as a, just in time kind of methodology recognize that you don't have to prepare too far ahead.

[00:04:53] You can learn things shortly before you need them. Instead of spending a lot of [00:05:00] time and effort preparing for. Might be needed, what you might need to do. You can also batch your learning and look at learning in certain categories and learning in easy to process chunks, rather than trying to master everything before you've even started on doing.

[00:05:24] I like to look at it as try to spend about 80% of your time doing, and only about 20% of that time learning. So when you track your work time, when you look at what you're doing, try to look at doing the majority of the time that you spend at least 70, 80%. Undoing something, not just learning things, because to put something out into the world to create something, you actually have to do something.[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] When you're doing just in time learning, look for ways to figure out where is the real world effort? What is it that I need to learn to do the next step alternate between learning just in time and doing the next step. Not trying to master everything. That's often what keeps us from ever getting started.

[00:06:25] And of course, Use other people and find other people who have already mastered it and use them to add value to your learning by teaching you, which also by the way, often helps them this idea of just in time learning. Instead of trying to prepare for everything actually gets us beginning to move forward, beginning to act even before we feel completely.

[00:06:55] But we're ready enough to start putting something out. The other benefit of [00:07:00] this is often you get feedback from doing that allows you to then focus your learning. So instead of having to learn everything, you end up being able to focus your learning on exactly what you need to know next. To either get better at what you just did or to do the next step.

[00:07:20] If it's a process that's going to take a lot of work over time or a lot of different processes. If it's a big project you can focus in on just the next step. This is so much more valuable than trying to use learning as a way to just avoid doing. Thanks for listening.

[00:07:43] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. [00:08:00] If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/.

[00:08:08] And sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent, or if you're in the us, you can text 4, 4, 2, 2, 2 talent tips. That's talent tips to 4 4, 2, 2, 2, and get those tips until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.