Why Researching & Learning More Isn’t the Answer

Ep: 222

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in an endless loop of learning, but all of that knowledge rarely results in action? 

As humans, we’re hardwired to always want more. We’re consuming knowledge and information at a near-constant pace, but the truth is that most of it is wasted time and energy. And, it actually leaves us feeling more stuck.

Too much learning, reading, and consuming of information creates what’s called cognitive dissonance. And just as the 80/20 principle states, 20% of the things we do get 80% of the results.

Consuming all of this knowledge creates too large of a gap between what we know and what we can actually take action on. 

This gap inevitably leads to stress and overwhelm. 

Today on The Bridge to Fulfillment®, Blake shares her story of experiencing cognitive dissonance. When she wasn’t seeing the types of changes or growth that she expected from all of the information she was consuming, she realized that in order for real growth to take place, she needed to slow down and embrace the Four Levels of Learning.

In this episode, you’ll learn the science behind the dopamine high that many high achievers experience when learning and consuming information. You’ll understand why this is actually a false sense of accomplishment, and why it rarely leads to change. You’ll explore the Four Levels of Learning and hear how you can use this concept for deeper learning that actually leads to the growth you’ve been seeking.

What You’ll Learn:

  • How a dopamine high works (1:37)
  • Understanding what really makes you feel accomplished (3:42)
  • The concept of cognitive dissonance  (4:39)
  • How to apply the Four Levels of Learning (7:00)
  • Why learning too much actually holds us back (11:21)

Favorite Quotes:

  1. Beginning to see the patterns that we have, looking at how we’re learning, and how we’re taking action differently can create huge positive momentum and shifts in our lives.
  2. Cognitive dissonance happens when we consume and consume and consume a lot of information, but then we don’t actually apply it or do anything with it. What happens is we actually start to build up this level of stress and anxiety.
  3. I kept believing I just needed to learn more, when in fact, that was never true. I needed to learn less. And I needed to learn how to apply it much more deeply. When I did that, unbelievable exponential growth happened in my life.
  4. As humans to be biased for more. But the reality is we don’t need more, we need the things that are going to get us closer to what we want in life.

Additional Resources:

Rather than hoping the grass will be greener, identify what the RIGHT next step is.
We can help you do just that.

Get clarity on where you are on your journey to career fulfillment, where you’re headed, optional paths to get there, and the right next step to take.

Start your complimentary, Personalized Career Fulfillment Plan by going to https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan

Want free resources to set your job search up for success? You can get them by going to: https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/mistakes

For other programs and opportunities to work with Blake, go to www.BlakeSchofield.com

Transcript

Blake Schofield 0:05
Hi, I’m Blake Schofield, founder and CEO of The Bridge to Fulfillment®, mom to three, USA Today top 10 professional coach, and former corporate executive who got tired of sacrificing my life for a comfortable paycheck. My mission is to expand women’s perspectives and empower them to achieve greater impact at home and work without sacrifice. This is The Bridge to Fulfillment®.

Blake Schofield 0:38
If you’re anything like me, you’re a researcher, you love to learn new things and want to be prepared. Anytime you are thinking to make a change in your life, you may spend a lot of time studying, researching, looking at the options or believing that maybe you need to go get some additional certification, education, or knowledge before you’re really ready to step into something else. Or you may even be that person who just has a love of reading, and just enjoys the process of learning new things. Well, if any of these makes sense to you, today’s episode is going to be really powerful. And I hope what I will do is open your perspective to how researching and learning can actually be the very thing that keeps us stuck from creating the action that we need to move into more fulfilling careers and lives.

Blake Schofield 1:37
You know, I’ve always been an avid reader. Back in elementary school, whenever the summer they would give those reading book clubs to read 30 books to get some sort of reward. While I was reading like that all of the time. In fact, if I’m not learning new things, I don’t feel my best. But it wasn’t until last year, I began to realize that the process of learning for me was in many ways giving me a dopamine high. So for those of you who don’t know very much about dopamine, dopamine is the chemical that actually creates motivation and creates, you know, an emotional high. And so by researching, by learning more, I was feeling more positive. I was also believing that that process of learning and educating myself was better preparing me. And so I really thought that the work that I was doing was moving me forward. And it wasn’t until a mentor of mine really started to challenge.

Blake Schofield 2:41
Where do you get your dopamine? Where are you spending your time, energy, and effort, on a daily basis, that is really bringing you some level of either satisfaction, or something that you’re consistently doing over and over again. Many of us don’t know, although if you’ve watched some of the recent media, you’ll see how much social media is constantly playing on our need for dopamine. Every time you’re scrolling through Facebook, or Instagram, or Tiktok, you’re getting a dopamine hit through that process. And that’s how people get so addicted to video games, social media, where you find yourself mindlessly scrolling, or playing games for hours. Because your brain is actually getting addicted to that dopamine hit.

Blake Schofield 3:31
And I thought about it not that well. Yeah, just like everybody. I have gotten pulled in to scrolling and doing far more than what I want on social media. But when I really thought about it, I was like the place that really makes me feel accomplished in what I’m doing is when I’m learning, when I’m reading, when I’m researching. And for the first time ever, I began to realize and start to think about whether all of that time, energy, and effort, was moving me forward. And here’s the pattern I recognized in my life that I now have recognized in so many high achievers lives. And we’re completely oblivious to it. But beginning to see the patterns that we have and look at how we’re learning and how we’re taking action differently can create huge positive momentum and shifts in our lives. So a very, I would say maybe not very well known thing, is something called cognitive dissonance. So I’m going to share this with you to help you understand why learning or absorbing too much information without taking action is actually really bad for you.

Blake Schofield 4:40
So cognitive dissonance happens when we consume and consume and consume a lot of information, but then we don’t actually apply it or do anything with it. What happens is we actually start to build up this level of stress and anxiety. Think about it. Have you ever experienced that where you wanted to do something new and you just researched and researched and researched and the more you research, the more you felt like there was this huge gap of knowledge or information that you didn’t have. And you started to feel less and less confident about being able to take steps forward. So you just kept consuming more and more information until eventually, you got kind of stuck, you just felt like I don’t know if I can do this. And you may have gotten overwhelmed and either taken a step back or not taken any action for it at all. Well, the reason that happens is because of cognitive dissonance, because we’re creating too large of a gap between what we know and what we actually can take action on. And so then our brain starts to actually believe that we have to take action on all of the things we learned, and it becomes so overwhelmed, it doesn’t even know what to do next.

Blake Schofield 5:42
Think about it, can you think of a time in your life when you’ve experienced that? Because I know for sure I had a ton, because I would just consume and consume, believing that if I learned more information, I will be better prepared and better set up to succeed. And I didn’t even know that I was actually doing things that were making it challenging for me to succeed. Last year, I was in a really impactful program. And one of the things in the program that I thought was so impactful was each week, we learned something, and then we would stop. And we would spend the next week really thinking about how that played out in our lives. We would journal, we would look for examples of where those things that happen in our life and how we can apply the new concepts. And this process of going through and doing that really helped me unlock and uncover something that I had missed my whole life that maybe perhaps you’ve missed, too. And it’s the place like I said, where those of us who like to learn, our high achievers like to research, get stuck in this endless loop. That really hurts our ability to move forward and create what we want. And what I learned is what I call the Four Levels of Learning. And I want to share that with you today.

Blake Schofield 7:07
So level one is really what we’ve been taught. What we’ve been taught in school. And I think how, for sure I did and how I see most people believe, learning is all about. Which is, I learned this concept, I memorize it, I’m able to communicate and share with other people about what this concept means. And therefore, I think, that I have learned, absorbed, and taken on this, and I can then use it in real life. The challenge is, though, that’s so surface, that in fact, we’re consuming and consuming and consuming. But most of the time it’s wasted time and energy. Because level one never sticks, very, very rarely. Now, if you get to level two of learning, it’s when you can see this concept and you start seeing it in other people because it’s far easier to see it in other people than it is to see it in yourself. And then you start recognizing, oh, I see that person making that mistake, or not applying this principle.

Blake Schofield 8:07
The third level of learning, that’s actually when you start seeing that principle in your own life. But it tends to usually be for more of a surface level. And you go, Oh, I see I’ve made this mistake, or, I see, Oh, I’ve had this opportunity. Now I would say based on what I’ve experienced, I think 80% of people get stuck in level one, believe that they’re completely done. And they just move on to the next concept constantly consuming and ultimately creating this cognitive dissonance that gets our brain so overwhelmed that we actually don’t take action or move forward. And so all that time and energy that we took to learn, we didn’t really embed it at all. And in fact, we got more stuck. Then, like I said, the people that get past that they see it and other people, they can help other people with it, but they’re not really living are applying it to themselves. And then you get to that third level where you are applying it. But again, it’s kind of from a surface level standpoint.

Blake Schofield 9:04
Well, level four is actually the place in learning that creates 80% of the results. If you’ve been listening my podcasts for a while, you know I talk about the 80-20 principle all the time, because I’ve consistently seen it to be true in every single avenue of life. Which basically says 20% of the things we do get 80% of the results. And if you can clearly understand what those 20% of the things are, you can be massively successful and far more productive. So this fourth level of learning is where almost all of the benefit is. And that’s really comes from when we understand this concept at a much deeper level. We understand how it really applies across multiple areas of our life, or multiple areas of business, or multiple areas of life. And we really embed it. We’re living and breathing this principle, and therefore it just becomes who we are and how we do things. And when you get to that final layer of learning, that’s where real change happens. And when I understood this, I understood why, for so many times in my life, I have learned concepts, but it felt like I was learning and consuming. But it wasn’t really seeing the types of changes or growth that I wanted in my life. And I kept believing I just needed to learn more, when in fact, that was never true. I needed to learn less. And I needed to learn how to apply it and apply it much more deeply. And then when I did that, unbelievable exponential growth happened in my life.

Blake Schofield 10:48
And so why do I share this with you today might seem like a really, I don’t know, high level or theoretical conversation. But what I’d like to do is open a loop for you, allowing you to perhaps see your life differently. Because often when I see people that are lacking clarity, and what they want in their life, are frustrated, because they’re trying to achieve their goals or get somewhere and they either aren’t sure the right steps to take or they’re doing a ton of work, but it’s not actually getting them where they want to go. This idea in this concept of the belief system that we have, that we just need to learn more, actually is one of the big barriers that stops us from getting there. I talked to somebody recently. So we’re in May. And I talked to somebody recently, who had read 30 books already in the year. And I was like, yikes, how many of those books have you actually applied? Because it’s near impossible if you’re consuming, consuming, consuming like that, to really be able to use those learnings to create forward momentum in your life.

Blake Schofield 11:57
You know, we are hardwired as humans to be biased for more. But the reality is we don’t need more, we need the things that are going to get us closer to what we want in life. And so often, it’s just a few things, but we can’t see it. Because our brains are so overloaded with all of the things we think we have to do all of the information we’re trying to consume, and the lack of space or time that we actually have in our days to process, and think, and reflect, and really understand, if what we’re doing is getting us closer to the life that we want. And so today, I hope I’ve given you some things to think about. Because if you like me love to learn, believe that you need to learn more in order to create what you want in your life, or feel like you have to do a ton of research to take action and feel successful and know that what you’re doing is gonna get you where you need to go, I can almost guarantee that you’ve been stuck in the very same pattern, I was stuck in the majority of my life. And that you very rarely, if maybe, never, been living in level four, they’ll place where you actually truly benefit from that change, and you achieve your goals with a lot more ease. Thanks so much for joining me on today’s episode of The Bridge to Fulfillment®. Until next time, have a great week.

Blake Schofield 13:38
Thanks for joining me today. Rather than hope the grass will be greener, identify what the right next step is. We can help you do just that. Get clarity on where you are in your journey to career fulfillment, where you’re headed, optimal paths to get there, and the right next step to take. Start your complimentary personalized career fulfillment plan at https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan. Again, you can get your personalized career fulfillment plan at https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan. Thanks again for joining and have a great week ahead!