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I can’t stop learning. I love it.
I bounce from learning about Twitter strategy, to forming habits, to creating graphics that look good — and deliver results.
Learning about one thing will often springboard me to learn about something else until I have filled in the gaps in my knowledge and can return to the topic that I started with.
But all of this learning has a dark side.
It can border on the point of obsession.
I used to struggle with insomnia years ago, and lack of sleep often triggered the dark side of my learning.
I would pick up one book only to get frustrated and turn to the next book. This prevented me from learning deeply. Instead, my mind was scattered, I feared I never was going to have enough time to do it all, and I flipped from one book to the next.
I clicked on one website and wasn’t there for more than a few seconds before I was off to a more helpful site.
I wanted to consume all of the information I could see so that I wouldn’t miss out. I wanted to find the best software to use. I wanted to make perfect decisions.
This was not healthy.
I believe this stemmed from lack of sleep, which led to anxiety and to an eventual adoption of the scarcity mindset, a concept that Brene Brown has eloquently written about in her book Daring Greatly.
The scarcity mindset is when a person holds on to a system of beliefs that convince him that he will never have enough — enough time, enough money, enough love. Enough anything.
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When I’m not physically and mentally healthy, my world flips over into the world of the scarcity mindset, a world of a noticeably darker hue.
Over time, I’ve learned to set myself straight — to work on building a strong foundation so that I am learning from a position of wholeness and purpose.
I need to have certain things working for me, though, or I know I will soon falter and drift back into the scarcity mindset.
So what’s on the other side of the scarcity mindset?
It’s the growth mindset, made famous by Stanford researcher Dr. Carol Dweck in her groundbreaking work Mindset.
The growth mindset is a system of beliefs that empowers the beholder of said beliefs. It is the confidence that there is enough to go around — enough time to learn, enough resources to facilitate learning, and enough confidence in one’s beliefs to make it so.
And though I’ve struggled in the past, I’m at a point in my life where I am consistently operating with a growth mindset. So what have I done to get there?
I’ve worked on myself, first and foremost.
Here are the three things that I absolutely need to rely on. Without them, I shrivel up into a frantic and muttering mess.
1. I get enough sleep. Without adequate sleep, I am nothing.
I need 7–8 hours of sleep, every day, or I can’t function.
This is something I have learned the hard way, and I won’t cut corners on this.
That means I have to commit to the principles of good sleep hygiene: going to bed at approximately the same time every day, winding down before bed by turning off technology or using a blue-light filter on my cell phone, not eating or drinking — other than water — late at night, and keeping my bedroom at a cool temperature.
2. I set schedules for myself. If I don’t know where my time is going, I will, without a doubt, waste it.
I’ve found Cal Newport’s daily schedule the most helpful for this.
It sounds obsessive and contrary to the point I am trying to make, but it works.
When I map out how my day is going to go, I feel less anxious that I won’t have enough time to do what I want. And when I see how I am spending my time, I can make adjustments later if I realize that my time could be better spent elsewhere.
3. I act with intention. Left to its own devices, my brain would sabotage my life.
What I mean is that, before I sit down to complete a task, I think about what I am hoping to accomplish by doing it.
Rather than mindlessly waste my time and life on Twitter, I mindfully consider what I would like to do while I’m there for the next 10 minutes.
If it sounds corny, it’s because it is. But if being corny means being happier when I use social media, then I will take corny every day of the week.
Also, I’ve recently been experimenting with a tip I picked up from reading a post by John Gorman. He talked about how all he does for productivity is stop and consider if he has 20 minutes or 50 minutes to spend. After he has selected a time block, he then decides how he wants to use his time. That’s it.
I’ll be honest, when I read that, I let out a sound that was a mixture between a snort and a laugh.
Then, I silenced my disgruntled ego and thought about it. It sounded too simple to be of any value to me.
But you know what? It’s the simple that gets the work done.
I’ve been following this method in conjunction with my daily schedule and, by golly, it really does work well.
Now, to wrap it all up:
These tips aren’t everything I do to make sure I’m in a good mental space for learning, but it’s the gist of it.
Maybe this will work for you, maybe it won’t.
What’s important is that you develop an innate love of learning, on your own terms.
When you do that, when your love of learning is a fire that can’t easily be snuffed out, you’ll develop a newfound appreciation for the life you live.
At least that’s what’s happened for me.
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This post was originally published on Medium.com and is republished with the author’s permission.
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