Learning and application go hand in hand. I grew up in a family of learners. My interest though was in sports, all things basketball. It got me through school plus my Dad taught me a lot about business. That is why I went to college. I still have my first college book, “The Think and Grow Rich Action Pack” by Napoleon Hill. My first course was Marketing and that was the textbook selected by the professor. That choice by the professor changed my life forever.
The book is more about branding yourself than marketing products or services. I went on to read “The Law of Success” by Napoleon Hill and in fact have a full library of his books. Best business books I ever read. My success is attributed in part to my application of what I learned.
Today there are so many opportunities and methodologies to help us learn. We are surrounded by online courses, news and assessments, podcasts, parcasts, the Internet, webinars, YouTube and so on. Delivery of content is easy thanks to technology.
For me, there are three challenges with learning today. Finding the time, topic selection, and application. I am laser focused on the topic selection and delivery. And then we are back to time. With 168 hours at my disposal a week, how much time do I carve out for reading and learning something specific that I want to apply in my life? The best bang for my time is the application of what I learned through practice; practice makes progress.
About every 3 months, I analyze my time. At the 50,000-foot level, 168 hours seems like a lot! Do you analyze where your time goes?