Too Much Information
Information products. Podcasts. Ebooks. Interviews. Webinars. Business books. Hacker News. Conference talks. Online courses…
I enjoy consuming information about startups, bootstrapping, marketing, and product design just as much as the next guy. It’s inspiring. It’s energizing. It grabs my attention and my interest. But there is a point at which these info products can turn against us.
If we’re not careful, these informational “guides” can give us a false sense of progress.
Spending an afternoon taking notes about an online course might make us feel like we’re being productive, but in reality nothing is getting done. Reading a business book might feel like we’re educating and empowering ourselves, but in reality, we haven’t learned anything of real value to our business.
Less reading. More doing.
The only way to make progress and the only way to learn is to take action. Real action. Every. Single. Day. If you’re not doing something — sketching, coding, sending an email, talking to customers, making a sale — then you’re not moving forward and you’re not learning.
I used to think that all I needed was a roadmap. I figured it’s just a matter of picking the right courses, ebooks, webinars and books to read, and following the steps outlined in the materials. Then I’d be shuttled strait to my end goal of building a successful bootstrapped startup.
But I learned nothing could be further from the truth. Once I got to work, got my hands dirty, and started taking action, I realized that learning about it is a completely different thing than actually doing it.
When watching a Mixergy interview or course, I see how things worked out for that person. But that doesn’t mean it will work out the same way for me. In all likelihood, it won’t.
My product is completely different than theirs. I’m pitching a different value proposition to a different market at a different time. I have access to different tools. My team and I have a different composition of skills. We come from different backgrounds. There will always be unforeseen hurdles — lots of them — which can never be outlined in any course or book.
The only way to uncover them and learn how to navigate them is to get in there and take action. Every. Single. Day.
Maybe I’ll end up with the result promised in the title of the course or book. But the way I’ll get there will be my own. No way around that.
I couldn’t agree more with this quote from Dan Andrews in last week’s Lifestyle Business Podcast:
“It’s tempting to follow these ‘magic bullet guru solutions’ like ‘I made 5 million dollars by doing X’, then you go do X and get screwed. What worked for him won’t necessarily work for you. For the big decisions in your business, you have to trust your gut.“
The value of information products
I’m using the term information product loosely here. I’m not just talking about all of those courses sold using an endlessly long sales page with a low low price of $197. I’m including regular blogs, interviews, books, ebooks, webinars… all of it.
The key is to understand what all of this information is good for but also what it isn’t.
Information products provide a starting point. They can provide a spark of inspiration, which you can use for motivation to get to work.
Information products provide examples of how something might be done. But no matter how detailed it may come across, there are always gaps that must be filled in by you. And you don’t realize how big those gaps really are until you’re in it.
They say the real purpose of completing our primary and secondary education is to “learn how to learn”. I don’t remember a thing about 10th grade trigonometry, but thanks to that education I’m able to use my brain in certain ways today.
If the value of schooling was to learn how to learn, then the value of our information products today is to learn what to learn. They give us a good starting point, and maybe some touch points between point A and point B, but the real stuff, the good stuff, the stuff that makes or breaks our startups, is learned in the trenches, by making mistakes, getting creative, and taking action. Doing it.