How To (practically) Implement What You Learn (Ep 26)

Welcome to The Mindset Show, I am your host Taksjindal and each week I will bring you an inspiring person or a message to help you develop a strong mindset and good habits. Thanks for spending some time with me today and I hope you enjoy this episode. Hi guys, in this episode I will talk about how you can implement anything that you learn from self-help books, youtube videos and podcasts. I will talk about why most people are not able to implement what they learn and how you can overcome the mistakes that most people make. So, let's start the episode. First, let's try to understand why most people are not able to implement what they learn. In this modern era, where all the knowledge is freely available on the internet, from productivity tips to deep knowledge in any field, why can't most people implement that knowledge in their lives? Well, to help you understand the answer, I want you to imagine yourself as a captain of a ship. A ship which has three holes, small hole, big hole and a very big hole and the ship is drowning because of these holes. You need to save the ship with the help of your support crew. So, what will you do to save the ship? You will try to fix those holes, won't you? So, now first you go to the very big hole and your support crew gives you the idea on how to fix it. You listen to the ideas and you feel relieved that now you have the solution, you will be saved. Then, instead of fixing that hole, you move on to the second hole which is little smaller and your support crew gives you more ideas. You feel happy again and then again, instead of fixing that hole, you feel proud that you know the solution and you move on to the third hole. The support crew gives you more ideas to fix the third hole and you do the same. Listen to the solutions, feel happy that you know the solution but you don't fix it. Suddenly, you realize damn the ship is drowning. You walk to the biggest hole again and you realize you have forgotten the solution on fixing that hole. You ask your support crew again, they give you the solution again and you feel happy and stupidly you repeat the same mistake of walking to the next hole without fixing the first. In the end, your ship drowns because of your stupid habit of feeling happy by just listening to solutions for every hole instead of fixing them. This is what happens to most of the people every day. Their ships drown every day because they are just getting the fake dopamine of listening to solutions by watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, reading self-help books. They don't fix any hole and they keep going from one hole to another listening to solutions. Drowning in the inaction of every day, people become addicted to the loop of temporary happiness of getting same knowledge again and again instead of taking action. So then, what is the solution? How can we stop our ship from drowning and fix those holes permanently by implementing the knowledge that we gain? Well, the solution is simple but very few people apply it. The solution is to focus on fixing just one hole at a time. Moving to the knowledge and action for the second hole only when the first hole is fixed. How do we do that in our real life? First, pick the biggest problem of your life that bothers you the most. That is the biggest hole in your ship from where most of the water is entering the ship. Now, watch five YouTube videos solving that problem. That is your support crew giving you ideas. Choose the easiest solution from those five videos and start implementing that solution from day one for every day for at least three weeks. Now, the key is not to let yourself get distracted to solving other problems of your life. So, for example, when I figured out that the biggest problem in my life was deep work, I read a book on that topic. The book had multiple solutions like going to a village where there is no internet or locking yourself in a hotel room for some days and doing deep work on a particular thing. But these were difficult solutions. The easiest solution the book recommended was to work for 40 minutes undistracted. So, I gave myself a goal of working for 40 minutes undistracted every day at least three times a day. I did not let my attention go to any other problem of my life like negative thoughts, overthinking, financial investments, nothing. I was only focused on solving that one problem for three weeks. That biggest hole in my ship, lack of deep work. This is where most people make the mistake. As soon as they implement one thing for day one, they become super excited and they start trying to build 10 new habits in the excitement. Okay, let me start journaling. Let me start meditating. Let me start investing. Now their focus completely gets diverted from the biggest hole in the ship. Now, two things happen. First, either they get too excited and try to follow 10 habits every day and give up after two to three days or they start consuming content on building more habits and get into that loop of fake dopamine by just getting knowledge instead of taking consistent action. In both cases, they end up drowning their ship. That is why it is very important to keep your focus on just one hole of the ship for at least three weeks. Don't even think of building a new habit or watching content related to a new habit in the excitement of following one habit. You will end up doing nothing. Fix one hole of the ship. Give it three weeks. Once that hole is fixed, your ship will be stable and you would want to fix more holes of the ship with the real confidence of consistent action. Same thing happened with me. Once I built the habit of deep work by working in 40-minute work blocks, I could read more books, I could make content for social media, I could work out and focus on my health. I started fixing other holes of my ship. But again, one hole at a time instead of trying to fix all holes at once and giving up. Every hole of your ship requires three weeks of consistent action. And here are some powerful tips that will help you stay consistent for three weeks in fixing that one hole of your ship. 1. Use a daily reminder. If you are building a habit of doing deep work every day, set a wallpaper on your phone saying, "Work 40 minutes three times to change your life." Or you can use a to-do list app which has a gadget on your screen to show you your task. One app that I use is TicTac. That app should have only one task on the list on your home screen. That is, "Work 40 minutes three times." That's it. Don't add anything else into that list. Do investing, start journaling, start meditating. Nothing else. Just one thing on the list and that is do deep work for 40 minutes three times today. That's it. Adding any other thing will distract you from fixing that one hole of your ship and your ship will drown. A reminder on your home screen about that one task will nudge you every time to look at your phone and take that one action every day for three weeks. 2. Learn to overcompensate. You need to remember everything in life does not go as we plan. Every day, life will throw a new surprise at you. Some days, these surprises will be too difficult to handle. They might make you skip your habit one day. Don't judge yourself or over-criticize yourself for that. Instead, overcompensate for it the next day. If you missed your 3 40-minute deep work blocks one day, study for 5 40-minute deep work blocks the next day. Use your self-guilt to overcompensate instead of over-thinking. The more you use your self-guilt to overcompensate, the more it becomes your asset. Like when I post an Instagram reel and it does not do well, which meant my content was not strong enough. Instead of overthinking that I am not a good content creator and I should give up, I overcompensate for it by putting up a deep story or doing a Q&A with my audience to provide them more value. This way, self-guilt becomes a signal to work harder instead of losing myself in the loop of overthinking and negative thoughts. Don't put pressure on yourself There is a powerful quote which says that we overestimate the things we can do in the short term and we underestimate the things we can do in the long term. Because of this, we put too much pressure on ourselves like we finished a self-help book. Now we put the pressure that we need to implement each and everything from that book otherwise our reading was a waste. We try all 10 things written in the book and give up after 2 days. Instead, I follow a simple rule. One book, one lesson for 3 weeks. That's it. This creates no pressure while reading that I need to implement everything that the book says. Instead, I focus on the one easiest thing from the book and it frees my mind to implement it. Now imagine I read 40 books every year and out of which at least 20 books are self-help. So I implement 20 deep habits every year and these habits have completely changed the way I think and I behave. If I would have put myself under pressure that I need to implement everything from one book, I would have given up on reading long back. Similarly, when you are doing any habit, don't pressurize yourself in doing it perfectly. Instead, try to do it in the easiest way possible for a consistent period of time. Like if you want to focus on your health, instead of going to the gym and doing 10 exercises and giving up after 2 weeks, start with just 15 minutes walk every day. It is easy to do and it will help you build consistency. 15 minutes of walk for 100 days is much better than 2 weeks of gym the whole year. Similarly, studying just 3 new chapters deeply for 3 weeks every day is better than trying to study 8 hours every day and giving up after 2 days and losing yourself in scrolling. So focus on solving the biggest problem of your life by taking the easiest step every day instead of trying to solve every problem of your life by taking multiple difficult steps every day and giving up after few days. Focusing on one easy step consistently for 3 weeks will build your confidence, mental strength and make you action-oriented. So to summarize the whole podcast, why can't most people implement what they learn? Because if you imagine yourself as a captain of a ship and your ship has multiple holes, everyone is busy getting the knowledge to fix those holes but no one tries to fix those holes one hole at a time and that is why they end up giving up and they end up drowning every day. So instead of repeating the mistake that everyone does, you just focus on one hole for 3 weeks. Pick up the biggest problem of your life which is stopping you every day and fix that problem by watching 5 YouTube videos. Pick the easiest solution from those 5 YouTube videos if your biggest problem is overthinking. Watch 5 videos on overthinking if your biggest problem is distraction. Watch 5 videos on how to reduce distraction. Whatever is your biggest problem that is the biggest hole in your ship. Watch 5 videos regarding that. Pick the easiest solution and implement that one single solution for 3 weeks consistently and that is how you will stop your ship from drowning by fixing one hole at a time instead of repeating the same mistake which 95% people do that is trying to learn about how to fix every hole and in the end not fixing any hole at all and drowning. You only focus on fixing one hole for 3 weeks and to help you take consistent action for 3 weeks, the three powerful tips are first use a reminder either put a wallpaper on your screen that reminds you of that one single action that you need to take every day or put a to-do list app that just has only one action on it. Nothing other than that one action. Anything else other than that one action will distract you from fixing that biggest hole in your ship and it will end up making you drown. So just one action that should always appear on your home screen so whenever you open your phone you should see that one action. It could be as simple as do deep work for 40 minutes. It could be as simple as go for a walk for 15 minutes whatever the biggest problem of your life is right now. Just one small action on your home screen every day it will remind you to take that one small step every day. Tip number two was learn to overcompensate. Yes you will miss a day or two during the week because life can be very difficult some days. Don't over judge yourself and over criticize yourself for those days instead overcompensate for that guilt. Use your self-guilt to overcompensate instead of overthinking. If you couldn't do your three deep study work blocks yesterday do five deep study work blocks today. Overcompensate the next day. This way self-guilt will become a signal for you to overcompensate instead of overthinking. Self-guilt will point you towards taking better action instead of getting lost in overthinking and scrolling. And tip number three was don't put pressure on yourself. Don't put pressure on yourself when you read a book. Don't put the pressure that you need to implement everything. Don't put pressure on yourself to change your life all at once. If you pick up the easiest step targeting your biggest problem in the life, easiest step from the book, easiest step from a YouTube video, easiest step from a podcast and if you take that easiest step for a longer period of time it will give you better results compared to the most difficult steps that you take for just two or three days. Remember walking 15 minutes for 100 days is better than going to the gym for just two weeks. Remember studying three chapters every day is better than studying eight hours for three days and giving up completely. Take the easiest step targeting the biggest problem of your life and take that easiest step for at least three weeks and that will help you build confidence, mental resilience and it will help you become more action oriented in your life. And here are some books that will help you implement things in your own life. Essentialism by Greg McConn, very very powerful book. It teaches you how to stay focused on the most important things in your life. Deep Work by Cal Newport again teaches you how to live a deep life instead of a shallow life driven by distraction and the one thing it teaches you how to focus on just one thing in your life and using that one thing becoming the best in any field solving any problem in your life by fixing one hole of the ship at a time. So if you found this podcast helpful don't forget to share it with your family and friends you never know whose life you might change by sharing this podcast and I hope you learned something new from this episode and you will go and implement the things we discussed. If you enjoyed this episode and got value out of it then don't forget to subscribe and please leave a review as that review will help me a lot in my podcast journey. I will see you in my next episode till then take care and take action.