Learning & Growth: Rethink How You Learn

For a long time, I thought I was doing well at learning. I read books. I listened to podcasts. I attended webinars. I collected ideas the way many ambitious people do—because it felt responsible, and it felt like progress.

I could remember what I consumed, but I could not always show how it changed my life.

That question bothered me enough to change my approach.

So before I tell you what I shifted, let me ask you first.

When you say you are “learning,” what do you want that learning to give you?

Learning is not the goal. Growth is.

I still believe books, podcasts, and webinars matter. They introduce new knowledge. They expand what you know is possible. They give language to experiences you could not explain before.

But I started to see a gap between knowledge and growth. Knowledge can stay in your head. Growth shows up in your choices, your skills, and your results.

That is not a judgment. It is simply a difference worth noticing.

If you are satisfied with learning as information, that is fine. Some seasons are about curiosity. Some seasons are about exploration.

But if your aspiration is to become better—more capable, more effective, more confident—then you might need a different kind of learning.

So here is the shift I made, and you do not have to copy it. I am sharing it because it changed my life.

I learned more when I created

At some point, I realized I learn more when I write than when I read. I can listen to a podcast and feel inspired, but I will forget most of it unless I capture my thinking and connect it to my own experience.

When I write, I cannot hide. Writing forces me to organize what I believe. It forces me to decide what matters. It forces me to explain something clearly enough that another person could use it.

In other words, writing turns ideas into something solid.

That is why I write books. Not only to teach, but to learn.

Now pause for a moment.

What is one idea you “know” but cannot explain clearly in your own words?

The school habit I had to unlearn

Graduate school also shaped this shift for me. I noticed how often we treated learning as quoting. We were trained to research and cite other people’s work as if citation itself was proof. And the deeper I went, the more I saw how many writers were quoting writers who were quoting writers.

It looked rigorous, but it also revealed something. A lot of ideas sound true because they are repeated, not because they are tested.

This is not a complaint about research. Research matters. Scholarship matters.

But it helped me separate two kinds of learning: learning that makes you sound informed, and learning that makes you more capable.

And for the kind of life I want, capability matters.

So here is a question worth asking.

Are you learning to know, or are you learning to become?

Reflection helps, but application teaches

I value reflection. Reflection helps you notice patterns and extract lessons from experience. But reflection alone did not create growth for me.

Application did.

When you apply something, you discover what is real. You discover what fits your context. You discover what breaks. You find out if your “insight” is useful or just inspiring.

When I wrote Create Shifts, I did not grow because I read more. I grew because I had to examine my thinking and stress-test my methods in workshops. Teaching people in a real room has a way of exposing what is clear and what is confusing. It forces you to sharpen your ideas until they work in real life.

That is when learning stops being theory and starts becoming proof.

So here is another way to say my shift.

I stopped treating learning as consumption and started treating learning as creation plus application.

You do not have to agree with me. But you might want to experiment with it.

What winning looks like in Learning & Growth

Before you choose a method, clarify your aspiration. Winning in this circle looks different for different people.

Some people want to stay sharp so they remain valuable at work. Some want better thinking so they can make clearer decisions. Some want to build a skill they have been delaying. Some want to regain curiosity. Some want to understand a changing world without feeling lost.

Your aspiration matters because it tells you what to learn and what to ignore.

So let me ask you the most practical question in this article.

What do you want to be better at thirty days from now?

Write one sentence. Keep it simple.

The small challenge: learn one thing by creating something

Here is a small challenge you can try this week. Not as a rule, but as an experiment.

Pick one idea you recently consumed—a chapter, a podcast episode, a lesson.

Then create something from it. Write one page. Record a three-minute reflection. Draw a simple diagram. Teach it to someone. Interview a person and ask a question related to it.

After that, apply it once in real life within seven days.

Then write three short lines: What worked? What surprised me? What will I do next?

That is how learning turns into growth.

You do not need to learn everything

One last reminder. The world is too big to learn everything. If you try to learn a hundred things, you might end up informed but unchanged.

So choose the one thing that will change what you do next. Learn that.

Then apply it.

The 30-day line

On your Nine Life Circles Map, find Learning & Growth.

Write: “For the next 30 days, I will play to win in Learning & Growth by ________.”

Choose one learning aspiration.

Choose one small shift for this week.

Then test it in real life.

After this, the next article is Service & Impact, because once you grow, the natural question becomes: how will you use what you know to help in a way that actually matters?