AP 0460: How Do I Balance Between Working and Learning?

AskPat 460 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 460 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. We have a great question today from Wendy.

Before we get to Wendy's question, I do want to thank you for listening because you're awesome, but also today's sponsor, which is AWeber. AWeber is the very first email service provider that I used. It helped me build an email list of over 120,000. The reason I love AWeber is because it is so easy to use. It has the number one customer service that I found through any of the email service providers that are currently out there, and it's the most popular one. It connects with a lot of third-party companies and software and products that allow you to build your list even faster. I recommend you check it out, especially if you're just starting out. It's super easy to use. If you go to AWeber.com/askpat, you can check it out and try it out for 30 days for free; a 30-day free trial, again, at AWeber, A-W-E-B-E-R.com/askpat.

Here's today's question from Wendy.

Wendy: Hi, Pat. This is Wendy from Creation Diva. I have a quick question. I've been making the move to work for myself again, and I'm curious, how do you divide out your time between learning and working? Do you limit it to a certain day of the week, or do you fit it in when you have time? I'm trying to find a good balance for keeping abreast of new ideas and learning about new people, but also focusing on getting things done. I was definitely in learning mode until a few weeks ago, but now I'm way behind on all my podcasts and articles and everything else I wanted to learn. Now I'm wondering where to meet in the middle. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Bye.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Wendy, what's up? Thank you so much for this question. I love this question because I have a great answer for you. This answer and what I'm about to describe which a lot of you who have heard the show before or who have heard me on Smart Passive Income, I've started to talk about this thing that has literally changed my life in terms of getting stuff done but also learning what I need to learn in order to get that stuff done. What this is called is just-in-time learning. I learned this strategy from Jeremy Frandsen over at InternetBusinessMastery.com. This is how I figure out what to learn and when, especially when you're working for yourself.

It can be very, like you said, difficult to draw that line, especially because there's so much great content out there on blogs and podcasts and YouTube and so many other different channels, on social media. You do feel like you're left behind. We do suffer from FOMO or fear of missing out, F-O-M-O. You'll have to battle that. You'll have to realize that you will have to let some things go for now. That's the big one. You have to let some things go for now in order to make things move forward for you now.

The just-in-time learning strategy essentially is to be conscious about what you're learning and making sure that whatever it is that you're learning, the content that you're consuming across all the different channels, make sure that it relates to that next task that you're doing. For example, if you know that the next task you have in your business is to start with email marketing, then anything and everything you learn at that point is going to be related to email marketing. You zone in on just that. It's like looking on the opposite ends of binoculars because you're not seeing the big picture. You're zooming in on that one little thing that you really need to be focusing on, and everything else doesn't matter. Now it doesn't matter right now, and the right now thing is really important.

The strategy there is to, as stuff is coming in, you don't want to miss it. Yes, you don't want to miss out on good stuff, but you put it aside for later. There's a lot of ways people do this. They use bookmarks in their browsers, but I recommend using Evernote which you can use to file away pieces of content that come across your way that aren't relevant to what you're doing right now. This is the number-one problem that people have when they're starting their online business or even working on it, no matter how long they've been doing it, is they try to do too many things at one time, and that also includes learning. Learning and doing whatever it is related to that next task that you have to do in your business is really the best strategy. Using Evernote, you can put these aside, this content that comes your way that isn't relevant to those current things that you're doing. You can put them aside in different folders. I have, I think, 20 or 30 different folders that I can go back to when it's time, and that's a nice thing. When it's time to learn about Pinterest and get all that information, I have a folder in my Evernote with all that great content already. I can see exactly where I need to start when it's time to start there, but it's not right now. Right now I'm deep in book writing and book marketing and all that sort of stuff. That's what I'm learning about right now. That also affects who I speak to, what questions I ask, who I get to interview, all that stuff, who I'm going to mastermind with, what topics I'm going to bring up in my mastermind sessions. All of that matters to whatever my next big thing is, and that is currently this book that's coming out later this year or early next year.

That's where I'm at now, and hopefully that makes sense to you, Wendy. Now the big thing is, okay, this makes sense from a higher-level point of view, but then when you really try to implement this, it's very difficult. It's very difficult to do it at first. It's mainly difficult for people because they don't know what that next one thing they need to do is. They don't know what that next task is. You have to literally say to yourself, “This is the next thing I'm doing. These are the things that relate to it that I'm going to learn about. Everything else, put aside for later.” That's just-in-time learning. Wendy, I hope that makes sense for you. That's how I divide my time.

Even going further into that, how much do I learn versus how much do I implement even if it's all about that one thing? I learn about something, and then I do it. Even within that one topic there are a lot of different subtopics. There's sub-steps, for example, but then you go in and do one step at a time and learn about that next step. The more you can break it down, the easier it's going to be for you. It's going to take some time to figure out what that next step is. You might have a general idea, but once you figure it out then it's going to become much easier. You could even lay those steps out one by one beforehand, so that when you do finish one you can move onto the next and then to the next and then to the next. That's where I would go from there. Wendy, I hope that answers your question. I wish you the best of luck on the upcoming work that you're doing. This was great for me to hear too, because I do have a lot of things going on. I do suffer from “bright lights syndrome” or “squirrel syndrome”; you know how dogs when they see a squirrel, they go squirrel, squirrel, squirrel? If you've seen Up, you know what I'm talking about—the Disney movie, Up.

Anyway, Wendy, thank you for the question. I hope this solves a lot of people's problems who are suffering from squirrel syndrome. Wendy, thank you once again. We're going to send you an Ask Pat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page. Thank you very much for all the questions. I really appreciate it. This show wouldn't exist without you.

I also want to thank today's sponsor, AWeber.com. Again, that's A-W-E-B-E-R.com/askpat to get a 30-day free trial of probably the most widely used email service provider out there, especially in the online business space, not only, like I said before, because it connects and speaks to a lot of other different software and third-party products, so that you can connect and build your lists in different ways from LeadPages to OptinMonster and several others. It's also great customer service, easy to use, great pricing. Go ahead and check it out. You can't beat 30 days for free, so check that out: AWeber.com/askpat.

As always, I love to end with a quote. Today's quote is from Anita Campbell. She said, “You can't expect to just write and have visitors come to you. That's too passive.” That's so true. You can't just write. You can't just build it, and they won't come. You have to build it and get them to come. Cheers. Take care. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.