Confessions of a Learnaholic
Hi, my name is Leanne and I am a learnaholic.
It’s confession time and this is mine: I am addicted to learning. It has always been this way, from as far back as my memory allows. I can recall fondly a childhood surrounded by books. I have always been inquisitive and ‘why’ a much-favoured question. I have always been driven by a strong desire to explore, understand and know things.
I could not wait to start school. Shortly before my first year of official schooling I became ill with the measles. Highly contagious, it appeared that my dreams of a big first day at school were under threat. As family legend has it, I was desperate and determined that I would be well enough for school on that first day. And I was.
My love of learning was amplified by the unique features of my early school years. Living in a sparsely populated, semi-rural location in a time when governments provided schools for the benefit of communities without the need to justify their financial viability, we had a high ratio of teachers to students. My first 5 years of schooling could be considered almost individualised tutoring. It’s fair to say I thrived in that environment where we were able to satisfy our individual interests and deeply engage in the learning.
By the time I moved on to larger and more structured schooling environments, the groundwork had been done. I was someone who loved to learn.
I carried this love into my university days and throughout my career. As a voracious reader and a collector of wisdom, I was a life-long learner before the concept was popularised. In my work focusing on behavioural and cultural change, a learning mindset has always been at its core.
On occasion, though, I find myself wondering. Can you have too much of a good thing?
The proliferation of learning opportunities at every turn is a boon for someone like me. In the same way that a chocolate addict might, I find myself shouting (in my head) Gimme, gimme, gimme, when I spot another webinar, online course, book, or podcast on an interesting topic.
The more that I expand my range of knowledge and interests, the more it opens up new knowledge and interests. It is insatiable. I cannot get enough.
Like any aware and concerned addict, I have been battling this for a number of years now and I have tried many things to bring it under control. Strategies like:
not buying any new books until I have finished at least one in the to be read pile,
not clicking on the sponsored links to webinars or similar found on social media from people who I’ve never heard of,
sticking with people whose work I have read and engaged in for a period of time,
only taking recommendations from trusted sources, and
quit quickly — stop reading a book, delete a course, don’t finish a webinar where it isn’t delivering on the promise.
For a curious person, with an eclectic and far-reaching array of interests, this is a constant battle. What if? What might be? I wonder. Is it possible? are all questions I ask myself to determine whether it is a good decision to go there.
I spend much of my thinking rationalising the decisions I made to say yes to a new learning opportunity, and much of my time planning for how to fit all this learning into the (yes, they are) limited hours available.
As a learnaholic, you would think, by now, I would have learned this lesson.
As I write this, I am involved in 5 different online courses — ranging from a couple of webinar series, to an intensive online workshop. I have 4 different books I am reading simultaneously, and that doesn’t count the 3 that I’m reading as research for a course I am developing. I have countless (I’m too scared to check exactly how many) podcast episodes to catch up on. And, as proof, that my strategies are not learnaholic-proof, today I purchased another book with a course attached. That was after congratulating a fellow writer on a 6-month program she is introducing in a way that almost confirmed that of course, I’m going to be a part of it.
When I write it like this, I really do wonder if it is an illness. Or if it is a way of hiding from something else, from doing the real work perhaps?
Or is it simply the way of the curious polymath? Is it one of the core values that someone like me believes is what makes for a meaningful life?
I don’t believe there are black and white answers to many of the questions I pose here. It feels more of a people like us problem, as Seth Godin would put it. People who like to learn take up learning opportunities. People who like to read have many books. People who like to explore go down rabbit holes. People who have a wide array of interests tap into a wide array of information and knowledge. There is no doubt there are way more learning opportunities than there is time to indulge in them all, and that many of them aren’t worth the time it takes to click the title. This is the trap we learnaholics all fall into at some point.
Lucky for me, I’m a life-long learner and I’ve got the scars from having fallen into these traps before. I’ve also learned that much of what I have experienced in this life has been from the inquisitive, exploratory, and learning approach I’ve taken to living.
Most of all, I’ve learned to find the sweet spot between too much and too little learning. The decisions I make are balanced and deliberate. Even a spontaneous leap to join a webinar, or to be the beta-tester on a workshop, is done with intention. Does this fit with my purpose? Will it enable me to propel myself, my business or my cause forward? Will I change for the better? Will it help me to serve others? Do I really have time for it? The YES or NO is based on a judgement — some science, but mostly an art — on possibility and opportunity.
I could write a whole other post on how those decisions over a lifetime have got me to where I am today. Or, how I have discovered that deep inside I know what, and how, works best for me.
I may continue for as long as I live to add podcast subscriptions at will, pile another book beside the bed, and say yes to the next workshop that comes my way, but I will do it with both intention and a sense of possibility.
I am a learnaholic and I’m okay with that.