We love the story of the hard worker, who just strives and strives and finally overcomes their adversity. We would also love this striving to be set to an inspirational music montage and be wrapped up in 60-90 seconds. That should about do it.
Unfortunately social media and media in general perpetuates the myth of instant success. We hope that we’re just naturally talented like Tiger Woods. Or that we have a clear calling that we’ve known since childhood. Both of these are possible, but rare. So rare in fact that I’m going to say that it’s not you. You’re part of the other 95%, right along with me.
Part of the challenge is that we have this myth, or structure in our mind, and then we start to look for patterns that match it. It’s called confirmation bias. We love it. For example, I have a friend who is so great at learning new things. He picks up skills like my kids pick up colds. He’ll learn how to code an app in a couple weeks, and he’ll learn how sales funnels work (and build them successfully) in a month. Plus he’s successful professionally, etc etc, you get the idea. But what I don’t see (and his wife pointed out) is that he works obsessively to learn these new skills.
He puts in 12 hour days focused on a single topic to the exclusion of everything else. He’ll log 70 hour weeks studying, trial and error experimentation, watching, reading and documenting everything he needs to accomplish his goal. People marvel at the outcome, but I marvel at the focus. People say how smart he is, but I marvel at the single-minded determination and commitment to figure out each painful step of the process. But the dozens of hours spent learning in coffee shops aren’t going to make a spectacular montage.
Instead we need to do the frustrating work. It’s hard. It’s not that fun. It’s just hundreds of hours and dozens of cups of coffee (well, that part might be fun) and pushing your brain to absorb new information when you don’t want to. It’s discipline, and if you don’t have discipline, you don’t have the pre-requisites to succeed. Even better is learning how to teach yourself to learn and identify bodies of knowledge which you don’t need to learn, but will be beneficial if you did learn them. It’s learning to become a perpetual learner.
The beauty of learning is that it’s a compounding skill, if you stick with it. The more you know about the more connections you can make. The more connections you have available, the more creative you can be in your problem solving. Knowledge compounds, and so much of it is connected, if you seek out those connections. Logic and theology, medicine and art, philosphy and artificial intelligence, psychology and history. The connections are all there, you just have to find them.
The latest problem is trying to figure out what to learn, assuming you’re in the minority of people who both want to learn and have the discipline / focus to actually follow through on learning what you’ve chosen. The information is there. It’s most likely free. Unfortunately there’s now so much information available, picking what to learn and where to learn it is half of the battle. A lot of the information out there isn’t too compelling or helpful. It makes learning all the more challenging.
So reject the easy myth, and do the hard mental work. Do the pre-work to figure out what you’re going to learn, the why you’re going to learn it, and get some support (charts, tracking, goals, and a good community to help you on that path!).