Do you really need to learn new things?
I was in a conversation with some people hiring us to present a keynote in a few months and they told me they’d heard all they needed to about one of our topics. We suggested another topic and they said they’d heard that as well.
After more discussion, I suggested they may need a different speaker.
They didn’t want another person, they wanted me. After more conversation, and hearing what their audience wanted to learn about, I asked a simple question “if they already know all of this, why are they still having problems?”
The silence was palpable.
I talked with them further suggesting learning and using what they learn is well more important than continuing to search for new and novel topics or spins on the same things.
The question remains for us all – are you learning or consuming without application?
It’s said to take 10,000 hours to master anything.
Are you learning 10,000 new things or applying what you learn over 10,000 hours?