Learning by doing
Time to Read: 3 min
Have you ever not done something because you thought you are not good enough? We often believe we lack ability or tell ourselves we won’t succeed before we even tried our best. Not believing in your abilities is as much of a vice as believing to be great. I have already written about the negative implications a negative attitude towards your own abilities has in my blog “self-image”. If you believe you have poor abilities know that it is totally normal to doubt yourself but know also that you have to change your mindset because this believe doesn’t hold up to reality. Nobody is born a genius or an athlete. It is only achieved by never ending work. At his birth Einstein knew as little as any other baby on this planet. Chris Bumstead, five time bodybuilding Mr.Olmypia, had as little muscle as any other human. And both of them knew nothing about their craft. Yet they both became masters in their craft. How? By doing it for decades always learning and tweaking their approach. It is unreasonable to expect that you are good at something if you have never done it. So why would you set unrealistic expectations towards yourself? Because it’s easy. If you won’t succeed why even try save yourself the effort. But you forget that you can only succeed if you are humble enough to learn. Embrace the fact that you will change the way you do things often. Most of the time when we decide do something we expect perfection. We try to reach five goals at once but falling short in all of them because we become overwhelmed and frustrated. As I started strength training in our local gym and as I learned about the details of building muscle I began expecting perfection. I made different training plans, meal plans, I calculated everything to do it the most optimal way. But by obsessing over the details I lost sight of the main objective, train hard. My believe was, if the training was suboptimal it wasn´t worthwhile. In the end I wasn´t as disciplined with my training as I could have been. Optimize while you’re on the road not before. This mostly occurs to me when organizing knowledge in my notion database. When documenting a new topic organization becomes vital to truly pervade the subject. But obsessing about the structure is useless because you have no experience what you should keep in mind and why you would organize what. I have scrapped my designs multiple times until I figure out what works best for me. I have learned while doing. I wasn’t stuck in inaction. You can only start optimizing if you understand the subject to a certain degree. And you will only understand the subject if you are working on it. Learning is an active process. Books and planning won´t prepare you for the challenges the world throws at you. Moreover, repetition and volume are the biggest negators for luck. Even if the odds are low do it often enough and you will be lucky. It´s simple math. We forget how much effort it takes to refine a process. Take a look into your past. As a child you couldn´t fathom the level you are on now. You surely know things and do things your younger self would be impressed by or think it´s magic. How have you achieved this level? By doing the thing over and over and learning while doing it. Humans cannot comprehend the compound effect. And you certainly cannot believe the level you will be on in ten or twenty years if you invest into yourself. Learning means to make mistakes and then to change your behaviour accordingly. You won´t make mistakes if you don´t try and do. This means you can´t learn if you don´t act. I have learned this lesson anew in my preparation for my exams. As I practiced with old exams I learned the details that matter, the structure and areas where I lack knowledge. I have learned by doing. So, go out into the world do things and fail and then adapt to become a better version of yourself.
Always Remember, life rewards the prepared.
