Moving from consuming content to effective learning
Career Development: Radically improve your learning ability

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. —ALBERT EINSTEIN” A more inclusive way to say this is “Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value”
The single most important thing we can do to be successful in life is by becoming valuable. And the most important way to become valuable is by investing in ourselves. By learning and growing our skills and capacity. A lot of us get it and are constantly trying to pursue learning to improve.
However, the road to learning can be long but to ensure we arrive at the right destination, we have to ensure our learning is effective.
The ability to learn effectively is a unique skill that will amplify and accelerate your career and really set you apart from others. As a Product leader, learning is key for me and I am continuously figuring out how to be more effective at learning. In this post, I will share some of my techniques.
Learning mindset and growth mindset are celebrated. I myself am one and look for these in people I interview for my team. But learning can be overwhelming! There are way too many books, podcasts, blogs, and content being created daily on way too many topics for us to keep up with. Jobs are requiring more and more skills to be on your resume. We get input from our managers, teams, and colleagues about the skills we need to learn. And then, of course, we see all the amazing skills people are displaying through your favorite social media sites. This results in a never-ending backlog of topics to learn about.

I love learning. It might sound crazy but those who love learning actually struggle more because we become overly caught up in wanting to learn all the time and might never feel like we are caught up. But to ensure my love to learn stays sustainable and fun, I follow a few principles that solve a few of the challenges that I often hear people ask me about.
There are some topics might be interested in vaguely. The following principles are not relevant in these cases. My learning is very fluid and unstructured in this case. My learning in this case is for pure joy and not necessarily about being effective.
I am overwhelmed! There is too much to learn! Where do I start?
There are always going to be more things to learn than we can. It is extremely important to spend at least a portion of time creating a learning plan. I first start with my learning plan. I typically create a broad learning plan over the holidays for the next year and I adjust it throughout the year based on changing needs of my work, life and interests. My learning plan has the following steps and it doesn’t take more than an hour or two.
I always start with why like Simon Sinek says. I identify the why behind my current learning objectives and ensure I am validating my learning against these goals as I proceed.
I document what I need to learn. For example, if I want to learn to be more “financially stable”, I break it down and identify the topics I need to learn more about. There could be several sub-topics like how to make more money, control your spending, save more or invest more.
I spend time prioritizing the topics that are most important. I have to keep my interest in mind too. While one topic might be the most important but I am not really feeling like following it, I start on another less important topic that might be more fun to get started.
Identify how you will learn these concepts. What resources will you use? You can develop a resource list by asking for people who might already be good at this. I look for content and thought leaders on the topics.
Acknowledge your learning style and customize. You might like books but some people might do better listening and some others might do better learning from videos and others might learn best in a classroom setting. I look for books, podcasts, Ted talks and thought leaders on the topic.
Then I just start digging into the topic. Continuously…
I spend a lot of time reading, listening, and consuming content but I can’t seem to retain a lot
We often see people posting about completing 50 or more books a year or listening to hundreds of hours of podcasts. I am guilty of being somebody who is trying to achieve a book number and number of podcast hours too. I typically read ~35 books a year. It is mid-June 2022 and I am on book #31. But just like most other things, we can’t really tell how effective this learning might be. Hence, I try a few tactics to make my learning effective especially if I want to really master the topic and not just become superficially familiar with it. My tactics are as follows
Read/Listen - Start with a book or a couple of youtube videos on the topic. Just start. Most books will have a youtube or some video about the speaker talking about it. There might also be a blinkist about it. I typically start by reading/listening to these as I get an overview of the concepts.
Make Notes - As I read, I take notes and highlight my findings from the book. Find your own way of making notes as you go along. For me, it is a printed book and my favorite tools are highlighters, pen, and paper. This improves my memory of the content if I highlight or write it down. I have tried writing down key points on paper and leaving it inside the book for future reference. This helps me go back to the book and refresh key concepts at a quick glance.
Reflect - I reflect on how the content can be applied in my work or life.
Implement - I find ways to implement what I read. Reflection helps me understand what I can implement. I create my own framework to apply it and try as much as I can knowing that not all of it is relevant at this time in my life.
Iterate - I always end up having questions about what I learned which takes me back to reading some more or picking another topic.
Re-read - There are some books I just love a lot and end up reading again when I need a refresher.
I don’t have too much time to read/learn
Keeping up with my learning objectives is tough when life is busy with work, family, etc., But some simple hacks can still help you find time for learning if it is important to you.
Pre-plan the list of books, podcasts, or any other content I prefer that I want to read/listen to. This helps me avoid any time browsing and getting lost in social media. Instead, I always have the next thing to read/listen to ready to go. It also takes the excuse of simply browsing.
Listen on the go. Anytime I need to drive is learning time! Bonus listening time when I walk our puppy, cooking, wait at the doctor’s office, in lines, or anything in between. Extra bonus is that there is no task in the world that is ever boring because even the most boring tasks are fun with books.
Bursts of reading: I get a Wellness day every 6 weeks. This is an additional day to rest, get the house in order, spend quality time with family and READ! I also sometimes take time off to simply read. It is sometimes just a day or a week. Holidays are especially great as it helps me read a minimum of five books sometimes more.
Reading multiple books at the same time: I typically have an audible and a physical book going in parallel. They don’t have to be sequential.
Surrounding myself with books: My workspace is surrounded by books. This helps me just pick up any book even if I have just 5 mins and read a page. It also keeps the pressure of all the unread books. I also leave a couple of books next to my bed and in go-bag for the car.
Read every day even if it is only 15-30 mins. While we wait in the car, before sleeping or I wake up before my family over the weekend to get some reading in.
Go broad on a variety of topics through snippets on podcasts where authors are interviewed or through apps like Blinkist
But the topic or book is boring!
There are way too many books to be read to waste time on one that is not engaging.
I used to be caught up in my own principle of always completing a book that I start but there are way too many books to be read for me to waste time on one that is not engaging. In such situations, I find a quick summary of the book online (there is always one), skim through the book, and let it go. Same thing with podcasts. If the topic is boring then go back to understand why you want to learn that. If the why is still important then find interesting ways to learn it. Like talking to others who might understand it better and won’t mind teaching you about it.
I don’t know what I don’t know. How do I plan if I don’t know what I don’t know and what topics to dig deeper into? What topics should I even learn?
Always keep up with what is important and current in your industry. But also find time to follow your interests. Sometimes I might not really be interested in a particular topic but a broad category. In such situations, I follow people who I think are great in that area. For ex, I follow Adam Grant, Simon Sinek, and Marshall Goldsmith for leadership; Marty Cagan, Shreyas Doshi, Lenny, Deb Liu, Gib Biddle etc., for Product; Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger, Mohnish Pabrai, Stig Brodersen, and Trey Lockerbie, etc., for investing, etc.,. I am inspired by a lot of people and they help me go deep on topics. I regularly set aside time to follow them and go broad on a range of topics. This becomes my knowledge base to tap into when the time comes. This also helps me keep up with industry trends and which topics to go deeper into.
Key Takeaways
Plan what you want to learn
Prioritize
Internalize learnings by implementing them when relevant
Iterate
Skip content that is not engaging
Follow thought leaders to broaden your perspectives
Keep learning..
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