“Knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing.” — Peter Sage
If you read a lot, but seem to forget most of the information you so eagerly soak up, this is for you. I’d like to give you 3 things today:
Let’s go!
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Has anyone ever asked you for directions and you were too embarrassed to admit you don’t know? So much in fact, that you tried to tell them where to go regardless? Just to save your face?
“Uhhh, I think it’s that way.”
That’s what most career advice feels like these days. Nobody has a clue, so everyone goes with their best guess — which is everybody else’s best guess also.
Hence, we live in a world of depressed millennials, which is permeated by two ideas:
If you’re fine with putting your life into the hands of chance, then you can stop reading right now.
Or, you can flip both of these ideas on their head.
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One of the most common conversations I remember from sitting in high school classrooms is the “Why should I remember this?”-debate.
“Why should I memorize where carbon is in the periodic table of elements, if I can just look it up any second on my phone?”
“Why should I remember when the Vietnam War started, if it’s on Wikipedia?”
“Why should I…”
It’s true that memorizing facts simply for the sake of memorizing facts has become useless.
Except for the one case where it hasn’t:
Being interesting.
tl;dr: I created a free, 14-day email course that’ll help you build a daily reading habit. You can sign up here.
Back in July, I asked the people on my Four Minute Books newsletter what their biggest struggle with reading was.
Here’s the unanimous answer:
It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
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I’m sorry Mum.
But I have to tell you something.
I have OLD.
Obsessive Learning Disorder.
There’s no cure for it.
If you’re born with it, you’re stuck with OLD for life.
My question today is: Do you have OLD as well?
Maybe we can be friends.
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Trampelpfad.
Want me to say it again?
Tram-pel-pfad.
Want me to actually say it?
The first half of the word “Trampel” comes from the verb “trampeln” which means to stomp.
As in “When we told the kids they weren’t allowed to watch TV, they ended up stomping up the stairs in frustration.”
The second half of the word “pfad” simply means path.
Therefore, a Trampelpfad is a path, which has been created by people stomping along the same trail.
You can most often find a Trampelpfad in the woods, and it looks like this:
Why am I telling you this?
One, because Trampelpfad is an awesome word and there’s no proper English word for it and two, because it will help you remember what I’m about to say next.
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“Oh my god. I just had a donut. It was an accident coach, but now I’m screwed. If history is any indicator, I’ll have had 7 more by the time I leave the office. I’ve never managed to stick to my diet this long before, so I guess it was only a matter of time until I fail.”
What you just witnessed is called a fixed mindset. I receive messages like these from my clients on a regular basis.
I’ll inevitably cut in with something a little provocative, like this…
“If that’s what history indicates, I strongly suggest you pick a different indicator :)”
…or this:
“So you’ve stuck to your diet longer than ever before, but it’s impossible for you to get better? My contradiction radar just went off!”
You see, as much as I love encouraging my clients, and getting them to pick themselves up and move forward, a fixed mindset is tough to crack, and therefore oftencalls for a steamroller.
It’s one of the root problems when trying to improve your habits and getting rid of it often requires one or even multiple striking, powerful, memorable and somewhat drastic events.
Today I’m going to show you how to create those events for yourself. But first, a story — because everyone loves those.
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