Self-Improvement

Feb 17, 2024

What the typical self-improvement journey looks like:

Get fed up with life.

Look to the internet as your savior.

Start watching self-improvement YouTubers who seem to have it all figured out(but we don’t)

Watch endless content while fantasizing about your ideal future.

Get stuck in tutorial hell.

Don’t take action.

Watch a video about how to take action.

Get discouraged.

Then when you actually go to take action, you don’t know what to do or how to start.

Repeat.

None of the knowledge you spent hours consuming planted itself into your subconscious because there was nowhere for it to go.

It seems like most people’s self-improvement journey starts off like this. Mine definitely did.

I watched and listened to hundreds of hours of videos and podcasts about business, health, and self-development.

But, I always struggled to take action on what I was learning. I kept making the same mistakes over and over again even though I was given the tools not to. I felt like I was learning when I was consuming, but none of it translated over to real life.

This isn’t just limited to self-improvement. In any area of life, we seem to do a lot more “learning” than doing. And that learning phase for some of us never ends.

I see a lot of people talking about how you shouldn't watch self-improvement videos because it's a waste of time.

Many YouTubers who make self-improvement videos also say, "Self-improvement is ruining your life." They keep making videos after saying that.

But I digress.

In one of the first videos on my channel, I actually talked about this issue of people not taking action.

I went through this phase of watching hours of self-improvement on YouTube. I mentally masturbated over the progress I was going to make. I wanted to post YouTube videos. However, I kept putting it off and not taking action.

I was over-consuming content related to it.

This is what everyone gets wrong about learning.

The problem is that we weren’t taught how to learn, we were taught how to gain knowledge. There’s a difference.

You need to experiment with the things you are learning if you want to gain an understanding.

This letter will teach you to do that.

Before we begin, a word from today’s sponsor: me.

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Growth Through Struggle

“But Abraham, i’m not ready yet”

Yes. You’re not supposed to be.

If you feel ready, it means it’s below your skill level.

The only way to grow and learn is through failure. And failure comes when you are out of your comfort zone or in other words, above your skill level.

The most productive and progressive periods of my life were during times of stress.

This is not just me though. Every technological advancement the human race has ever had was during times of struggle. We were forced time and time again into the next stages of evolution.

It took us more than 60,000 years to go from the bow and arrow to the gun but only 445 years to go from the gun to the atomic bomb.

In fact, while I was researching this, I found out that the First World War marked both the end of battle horses and the beginning of weapons of mass destruction.

“War has always been the mother of invention” - A. J.P Taylor

Now I’m not saying that we need to go to war to grow but the point is that growth happens when your skill level is challenged.

If there’s not enough challenge, you will be bored.

If there’s too much challenge, you will be overwhelmed.

You keep postponing that task you want to do because you believe you need to learn more before presenting or publishing it.

This is because you feel more secure in the learning stage.

You feel less secure when facing the vulnerability and criticism that comes with sharing the finished product.

In reality, you wouldn’t want it any other way. If it was, it wouldn’t be worth doing. It wouldn’t give you the same dopamine peak as something that was more exciting or challenging.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book flow wrote:

“Playing tennis, for instance, is not enjoyable if the two opponents are mismatched. The less skilled player will feel anxious, and the better player will feel bored.”

He then went on to say:

“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.”

"Enjoyment" here is referring to flow.

When we engage in something that we enjoy that matches our skill level, we enter the flow state. The flow state is when all of your best work will get done. Hours will go by without you noticing and you feel so immersed in your task that you forget to stop.

Knowledge to Wisdom

So you’re probably thinking, “Okay I get it I need to struggle if I want to grow but how do I actually learn?”

By doing.

In other words, learning is done best through doing. If you don't have something to apply your knowledge towards, your mind will not register it as important and discard it.

Any good student knows that practice problems are better in the long run than flashcards. You're applying the knowledge rather than memorizing it without context.

I mention Ali Abdaal's book a lot, but it's really good. In his book, Ali Abdaal mentions a term called Enactive Mastery. Albert Bandura originally invented it.

Enactive Mastery: The process of learning through doing.

He says in the book, "...the more we do something, the greater our sense of control. We learn. We level up our skills. Our confidence grows. And we empower ourselves."

The bottom line is that you need a project. You can learn something way quicker when you have a project to apply it towards (obviously)

The project will serve as a deadline, a standard, and a general direction to head towards.

The project may also raise the stakes by requiring something to be of higher quality.

For me, my personal brand and writing have to be good. If not, people won't read or listen to me and I make less money.

My writing has now become my project.

When you outline or start a project, you are making an intention on that project.

That intention to learn something will help you notice things that will aid in your progress.

Then you will hold the end goal or the purpose of that project at the top of your mind all the time. Having it in the back of your mind all the time will help you to apply lessons and other things you hear to it.

Depending on your current goals or purpose, you will get something out of this letter that even I'm not getting. Simply because you're highlighting certain words that stand out in relation to your specific situation.

But the intention is important.

If you intend to actually learn from this letter and use it to take action then you'd be thinking of ways to apply the things that I'm saying even as you read. You'd be getting those "aha" moments of clarity.

If you intend to procrastinate by reading this, then you will procrastinate more and not learn anything.

The main idea here is that you shouldn't just learn. Learn in accordance.

You Need A Project

You need to make a conscious choice about what area you are interested in learning about.

Don't worry about not knowing enough. This is good. You'll learn faster this way.

Then, you need a medium to distribute your findings or outline a project.

You can apply your knowledge in a few different ways. By far the best way is to share your lessons online through social media.

Why social media?

Because you can share your journey from the ground up and pave the way for people one step behind you or at the same level as you.

Even if you don't know how to do something or haven't done it yet, you can share how you're going to do it. People will want to follow along with it.

This path is especially true for people who enjoy self-improvement. It's also true for anyone who likes to learn a lot of different things.

As you learn something, you slowly improve your skills and face greater challenges. Every time that you get to a new level of challenge, you are more than qualified to educate those under you.

If you learn something and can relate it to your experiences, you can teach it to someone who doesn't know. This is how ALL knowledge is shared.

"You don't have to be a guru. Just be a Guide"- Ali Abdaal

Then you, in turn, memorize and learn those things better.

This is what is called: The Protege Effect

The protege effect occurs when someone puts in more effort to learn information when they know they're going to teach it to someone else. This is different from the effort they would put in if they were only learning it for themselves.

The keywords here are "when they know."

This is that intention coming into play again.

When you teach people things you've been learning or are learning, you memorize and learn better. Not just while you are doing it but also when you are intending to teach it to other people.

My self-improvement skyrocketed the moment that I started posting videos online.

And it skyrocketed even more when I started to do coaching and consulting.

I would hop on a call with a client and sometimes I would struggle to articulate certain things to them. Or I just wouldn't know what to say. That meant that there were missing pieces in my knowledge of that subject.

Then afterward, I would either research that thing to understand it better. Or, I would pick up information naturally that helped me to articulate it better next time around.

So that is another form of a project.

There is a quote that Eckhart Tolle mentions in The Power of Now:

"The teacher and the taught together create the teaching."

How To Learn

I'll run through some action steps of what I do when I want to know more about a topic.

This is how you actually learn things. This is also part of my writing process.

First, pick an area of interest or a concept. This can be a whole niche field or even down to one sentence.

Next, brain dump everything that comes to mind about that thing. Anything that you already know about it or think you know.

You have to do this on paper or digitally. Somewhere that will hold this information that isn't in your head. Because you will forget. I recommend carrying a pocket notebook around with you everywhere you go.

You can use this as your catch-all without getting distracted by your phone.

Then, set a deadline.

If you give yourself a month to do something, it will take you a month to do it. But if you give yourself a week, you will get it done in a week.

The more time you give yourself to do something, the less urgent it seems and you will put it off. Then as it gets closer to the date, you will procrastinate.

You need a deadline that isn't so far out that you will become lazy but not so close that you become overwhelmed.

This deadline will also serve sort of as a standard. This is especially important for perfectionists. The work will never feel like it is ready. There's always something you feel you could improve.

But you have to get the first iteration out and improve next time around.

Every time I release a newsletter, I immediately think of ways that I could have made it better or I come across some idea that I could have included. But it doesn't matter. I didn't have that idea or that improvement by the deadline, so it just wasn't meant to be.

As we talked about earlier, you only learn through struggle. This will require you to get out of your comfort zone.

Remaining inside your comfort zone is like locking yourself inside a self-imposed prison.

Get out of your little ball of comfort and challenge your own ideas and beliefs. This is what minds of high development do.

Refusing to challenge your own beliefs will make you stagnant because you aren't expanding your mind by moving out of your comfort zone.

If you stay stagnant, you will fall behind.

Conscious Consumption

You need to balance consumption and action every day if you want to learn and improve.

Like I said before, if you don't have something to apply your knowledge towards, your mind will discard the information.

After you follow all of the other steps I laid out for you, you need to know when you're going to consume and how much you're going to consume.

Once you have your project, you should only be consuming information related it it. But if you consume way too much you'll end up in the same cycle as before.

You need to choose a source of knowledge(book, Youtuber, speaker) and have a dedicated time of the day to consume it.

For me, I have dedicated time each day to reading. I will dedicate at least 30 minutes, all the way to 1.5 hours to reading. I do this in the afternoon after all my work is done for the day, I find that if I consume before my work, I have too many ideas and I get confused. It's better for me to consume in the afternoon, note my findings, and then come back with clarity on what I want to write in the morning.

If I want to listen to a YouTube video or podcast, I will limit that only to when I am at the gym or when I'm driving.

If I'm listening to an audiobook, I will go on a walk or sit at the park.

Limiting my consumption to these times helps me to not over-consume and makes me be more cautious of what I am consuming because I have limited time to.

So I will make a better choice.

Self-Experimentation

The last step in learning is self-experimentation.

“Without imitating other people, choose what is appropriate for your own size and shape; you should have weapons that you can wield comfortably. For Generals or foot soldiers, to like or dislike certain things is bad. Being adaptable and inventive is vital.” Miyamoto Musashi

On your journey, there will be lots of people handing out prescriptions, claiming theirs is the best. It's important to take everything you see as perspective, find the value in it, and take what works for you and your current situation or end goal. Your mind will naturally do this on it's own, but only if you have an open mind and you make the intention to learn something.

If you want to improve, self-experiment. Prescriptions should only be used to get the ball rolling. When you self-experiment, you will find gaps in a system and fill them using your own methods and experiences.

Make sure to check out 14 Days To Purpose for a free journaling course about purpose that will help you find direction and help you on your self-improvement journey with questions you've never asked yourself.

That is all for today. Have a great weekend,

-Abraham