Do what you know

mapmaker.curtrosengren.com

I was listening to Achievement Radio on Live365 and there was a short spot from Eric Lofholm. His message was simple.

"Do what you know."

How many self-improvement books have you read over your life? They might have been career books, or wealth-building books, or get-in-touch-with-your-soul books, or get-a-better-body books...

Lofholm's message was directed at people in sales, but it is applicable to anyone out there. If you're like most people (including me), you have probably learned ten times over what you need to know in order to fill your world with satisfaction, fulfillment and joy, and thrive while you're at it. Yet we keep buying books and reading blogs and listening to gurus, looking for the answer that will make it happen.

So how about this: sit down and start making a list. What do you already know that you need to do, but you're not doing? What steps do you know you need to take that you're not taking?

I'm not suggesting that it's pointless to read any more books or listen to any new perspectives. There are always different ways of looking at things or approaching things that can make a piece fall into place that you hadn't seen before. But odds are good that if you keep looking for the answer "out there," that's where it's going to stay.

One thing you might do is create a place to put the key points you learn. It's so easy to read something or listen to someone, only to have most of it disappear from our minds. Keeping an ongoing record of important ideas and actions can start to build a reference document of sorts. Think of it as a cheat sheet for success.

Take a look at what you already know, pick one thing (or a set of things) to do and start doing it! You can read books and listen to gurus to your heart's content, but make sure you're not substituting that for real action.

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

Comments

[Dick Richards]

Curt -- this post made me stop and think, because I am not sure that I agree wholeheartedly with Lofholm -- at least not for me. I'm also not sure if the quote means "What you know" or, as you morphed it, "What you know you need to do" -- two different things.

The reason that I have a problem with the quote is that what I know about myeslf is that I need continual learning and easily get bored just "doing what I know." I can only do what I know how to do for relatively brief periods.

Maybe I ought to go listen to the broadcast, because I have already used the term "what I know" in about 4 different ways here and am not sure what he means by that.

[Curt Rosengren]

Dick, I think your disagreement with Lofholm is probably less a function of what he said and more a function of a lack of clarity on my part.

The basic idea is this. We DO know a lot more than we think. Especially if we have been reading how-to, self-help, etc. books. We voraciously devour tips and pointers, don't really put them into action, and then move on to the next thing that is going to give us "the answer."

So if you already know it, then DO it.

At the end of the day, knowing the answer doesn't mean squat if you don't do anything with it.

Are there opportunities to learn more along the way? Of course. Can we get more insights that help things make more sense? Yup.

But for many the quest for more knowledge about what to do, how to do it, how to think about it, etc. has a tendency to become the end result itself, rather than a means to an end.

The quest for learning and understanding, while definitely an important piece of the puzzle, shouldn't come at the expense of actually DOING.

[Lorri]

This is great! I have been reading your blog for awhile - and this one rings so true (as many of your ideas do). I am guilty of reading Runner's World and not running - It inspires me but...I gotta make it happen - same is true with diet - I know i need to eat more fish and greens - I read up on it - etc...Need to do it! Action Action Action! otherwise its all in my head!
THANK YOU for reminding me...again.

[Eriq]

There's a similar line of thought for writers: Write what you know. And a contrasting opinion: Write what you want to read.

I suspect the same thing may apply to "Do what you know". Do what you want to know.

You probably know lots of things that you don't want to do. (Bad habits are at the top of this list.)

[Dick Richards]

Curt - thanks for clearing that up.

THIS I definitely agree with -- "At the end of the day, knowing the answer doesn't mean squat if you don't do anything with it." I once knew a man about whom it was said, "He thinks an insight is a real change." The comment was intended as an insult.

Eriq - I subscribe to a third line of thought about writing. It is for me a discovery process. "Write what you know," is tedious work for me: a real slog in deep mud. "Write what you want to read," comes closer to my truth. I'd say, "Write what you want to know."

The injunction, "Write what you know," (received as a kid) was a major barrier to my writing career. It took me many years to get past that one.

[Hiren Shah]

The reference document and not substituting reading for doing are very good points. I would also like to add for writing "I write to know what I think"

Otherwise in "Do what you know" the context has to be clear. Supposing an industrialist has burnt his fingers after an unsynergistic diversification "Stick to what you know" or "Do what you know" makes sense. This could be true of an individual too if he has strayed in the wrong profession.

Where choosing a career is concerned, I think the better idea is "Choose your career not on the basis of what you know but who you are". If only that could be determined with accruacy and without too many trial and errors.

[Steve Harold]

I think I have fallen into the trap in the past of buying those self improvement books hoping to see the light. Yet, what I haven't done yet and, this of course is the lesson of simplicity, is to write down what I know I can do to change or develop more, using my current experience and knowledge. In other words putting into practice some of those insights of the self developments books I have already read.