Today I spent several hours frantically trying to learn new things. Somehow I failed while also succeeding.
I started the day extremely excited and ready to tackle the challenges set before me, but by the end of the day, I was exhausted, my brain was overflowing, and I didn’t feel like I had learned hardly anything.
My main goal going into the day was simply just to continue learning MailChimp and figure out how to use an email drip campaign to help promote my upcoming podcast. I spent several hours going from one tutorial video to another. Getting sidetracked by “look at this thing MailChimp can do, Look at what you can integrate with MailChimp, See these trick for using MailChimp.”
I. Was. Beat.
I learned so much about MailChimp that I actually started learning less the longer I looked. There were too many topics. There were too many words. There were too many customizations.
I started wondering what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I process all this content I was consuming. I’ve marketed myself as someone who can learn quickly. Am I living up to that?
It’s easy to feel like you’re losing your mind when going into something new. Especially when you have absolutely no experience in that area. But I realized that I need to get used to that feeling. If I truly want to constantly be gaining new skills and knowledge in different areas, I need to always feel like I’m overflowing with too much information.
However, when you are in the thick of all of this, you must remember to take a breath and get focused.
Set the goals for what you want to learn that day, and stick to them.
I have always had a fascination with learning everything about everything, but there comes a point when you have to just learn what you can to get to the next day. Sure, I want to know everything about MailChimp. I want to be able to use it to the top of its capabilities. But that’s not what I need right now. Right now, I just need to learn how to do one thing with it. Once I’ve learned that then I can move on to the next thing.
I’ve experienced similar struggles playing cello and piano. There are some songs that you sit down to play, and you know immediately it’s above your level. It’s so tempting to just sit there and try and play through the whole thing immediately, but this really doesn’t accomplish anything productive. If you want to learn that song, you’ve got to learn it measure by measure, note by note.
Yes, don’t do tomorrow what you can do today. But also, don’t attempt to do everything today, forgetting that tomorrow also exists.
Make a goal, take a breath, and get focused.