How you keep fooling yourself

The Delusional State of Learning

Learning new skills and subjects is the key to human evolution.

Humans would never have developed if they hadn't learned new things.

We would never have been able to cook, light fires, or enjoy modern facilities.

If our ancestors didn't just sit behind screens scrolling through motivational or educational content; they actively wandered in the wild and developed survival instincts.

They learned those skills by actively doing.

Anyway, learning is mainly of two types: active and passive.

Active learning involves actively participating and solving problems, while passive learning involves observing, listening, or memorizing.

People often consume content constantly before taking any action.

How many times have you found yourself guilty of over-consuming content?

How many times have you felt that you don't have specific skills to start a new project.

Nowadays, information is readily available at your fingertips.

Thanks to our good ol’ pal internet.

You keep procrastinating taking action and often feel a constant need to know more.

That's what I call a delusional state of learning, or a bubble.

Because 90% of the information that you read, listen to, or passively consume is forgotten in a day, it's easy to fall into the trap of constant consumption under the impression of learning something new.

Let me explain with an example.

If knowledge is the bullet, action is the gun.

With bullets alone, you can't do much, but with a gun, you can outrun.

You may ask how; let me explain now.

You can throw the gun at the target and can rule the market.

Knowledge is good to have, but of no use if you don't take action.

For once, you can succeed and survive without knowledge and learning on the fly (as you take actions), but you would never succeed if you just keep on reading or accumulating knowledge.

To make progress, you need to take actions.

Constant Content Consumption Bubble

All the content you consume is mere entertainment, mental masturbation.

If you don't take any actions and expand your knowledge through deliberate practice, you'll be stuck in the hamster wheel of just mentally masturbating every day.

But implementing what you're consuming would help you grasp the concept and would transform your personality.

You can read 52 books a year and get applause from people, but if I ask you to take action based on the 52 books, you'd frown as you'd have retained nothing.

I went on a little rant there, but this self-actualization has been building up for a while.

I've been a victim of getting stuck in a loop of constant content consumption.

I once was at the lowest point in my life, frustrated and infuriated with not seeing any progress in life despite having all the knowledge, devouring hundreds of self-help books, listening to thousands of hours of podcasts, and watching hours of content on YouTube.

How to Get Out of This Rut and Start Seeing Tangible Results

There's no harm in consuming meaningful content, and I'm not against it.

But the problem is when you get stuck in the hamster wheel of constant content consumption, never taking any actions, never unlocking your true potential, and never seeing any tangible results.

You end up cursing your fate, God, and every other person in your life, developing envy seeing others tasting success and winning in life.

But if you had taken actions, you'd have tasted success, fulfilled all your dreams, and been happy with your life.

You can simply get out of this rut by following a simple technique called, ‘Consumption Diet’.

Consumption Diet

What's consumption diet?

The idea of the consumption diet revolves around taking more actions and consuming less of content.

Let's do a fun and simple experiment.

Think about how you spent your whole day yesterday.

How many hours did you waste scrolling through junk content (mindlessly scrolling through social media)?

How many hours did you spend doing something productive?

And just be honest with yourself.

This experiment would give you a reality check and would help you get back on track.

I used to waste time binging content, not getting any meaningful work done, and procrastinating.

I was sweating over why I wasn't making any progress despite devouring meaningful content for hours.

Let me tell you how I turned the tables around.

How you too can turn the tables around

I wanted to make a decent income with copywriting and marketing, and like any beginner, I got stuck in the hamster wheel of constant content consumption.

It's easy to keep on binging content under the guise of learning something new.

In my opinion, the biggest reason humans procrastinate taking actions is that it's hard.

It's painful to get rejected, see yourself failing, being judged by others, and not seeing any results.

So, you think if you learn more, you won't have to deal with these pains and fears, but the pain and fears are part of the process.

If you want to set yourself up for success, let go of all your fears.

Overcome All Your Fears

To succeed in copywriting and marketing and make a great living out of it, I needed to create a social presence and grow my personal brand.

This was the most common advice to get my feet off the ground as a marketer and copywriter, but I was fearful of getting judged, rejected, and failing.

I didn't have the courage to post on social media and ended up wasting two crucial years of my life sitting over this wonderful advice.

Others kept succeeding using the same strategies.

But I was fearful and kept gathering courage to start posting.

One day, I decided to let go of all my fears and started writing on social media, and this year, I started posting on LinkedIn.

Profound Effect

Writing on LinkedIn and acting upon the advice really helped me become a better writer, marketer, and progress in my career.

It enhances your marketing skills, polishes your writing skills, and forces you to come up with ideas.

If your followers starts engaging with your posts (once you have a few hundred), you'll get quick feedback on your ideas. Writing on social media would help you network with exceptional people, which would open the doors for a plethora of opportunities.

Once you get some traction, people will start sliding into your DMs with opportunities.

And It really transforms your personality (and makes you a better person).

Your communication skills get better, you understand people better.

Now let's talk about a few challenges, so you can arm yourself up and not quit before seeing results.

It's tough to get started, and it's even tougher to be consistent.

But have a purpose to show up daily and put the reps in.

For me, it was improving my writing and marketing skills.

Be very wary of this thing: you'll often find yourself chasing those vanity metrics like the number of impressions, likes, comments, and shares.

All these things matters, but just posting for the sake of getting more likes or comments will drain you mentally.

You'll soon burn out and would quit before seeing any results.

But here's a simple strategy I used to keep myself motivated.

Just be really clear with your purpose of growing your social media channels, review the metrics on a weekly or monthly basis, analyze what things you could improve, what ideas sticks with your audience, and double down your energy, creating your content around those ideas.

That's all, folks and with this advice we conclude or newsletter.

Let me just encapsulate the whole newsletter in a few byte-sized bullets.

Want to see progress in life?

Stop over-consuming content and take actions.

Be careful with the content you consume.

Try consuming ,ore meaningful content and minimize binging on junk content (social media).

Let go of all your fears. That's the biggest roadblock between you and your success.

Good luck with your journey, and start taking actions.

P.S. Let me ask you a question: what action can you take right now after reading this newsletter?

If you can answer this question, I've really succeeded with the purpose of writing this newsletter.

If not, I can certainly say that you're a really dumb person.

Kidding!

Re-read the whole newsletter and let all these ideas seep deep into your subconscious brain.

Have a great day!