I'm still not sure what I want to do when I grow up. Chronologically I'm old enough to have grand-children, mentally I'm a bit giddy about all the neat things I want to learn. That is, however, the biggest frustration I have right now. My brain can handle learning a thing or two. My list of "I want to learn..." is a couple dozen items long. Even if I were as smart as I used to think I was, there is no way I can learn all that at one time.
Time, however, may be on my side. You probably noticed that I write about leadership philosophy. Few things are more dear to my heart than helping people grow at work and in life. On the recent family vacation my wife went and took beautiful pictures of the Great Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. I sat around the campfire and read "Management" by Peter Drucker. Great stuff, I have several pages of notes and last week's blog post in my notebook now. It was fun coming back to work and seeing how I can put Drucker's thoughts into practice.
This weekend I've spent some more time with dear Peter and have another stack of notes I want to master in practice. One of which is planned continuous learning. Instead of confusing both my brain cells I'm going to pick a topic and spend the next year or so on it. Well, in addition to the Drucker learning and the physical workouts to keep the achey-creakies away. A topic, mind you, means the other nearly two dozen topics are not going to be allowed to intrude on my learning. I have wasted a large amount of time bouncing from one topic to another, to another, and to another. In the past few weeks I have learned little except that I can easily waste time thinking about learning instead of actually learning.
I think humans are easily distracted. Am I right? Do you find yourself looking over a new product or magazine instead of spending time learning those things you said you wanted to know? Have you gotten into an activity cycle that keeps you so busy you can't find time to learn anything? My brain was boggled! It kept being so until I figured out something and promised myself that I will stand firm on this (my wife is probably snickering at this point). I will waffle, that is, I will allow myself to fail some times. But I will come back to my path and see where I am in a few months.
How about you? Is there something you want to learn? A new mental adventure you want to set out on? Now is a good time to start! Much better than "tomorrow".