Are You Mentally Masturbating?

Max was a man of books.

He had always been fascinated by them for as long as he could remember.

As he grew up, this love for reading turned into a passion for learning.

He was constantly attending seminars, workshops, and trainings, absorbing as much information as he could.

When Max graduated college he decided to start his own business, and he knew he had to be well-prepared for it. Or he thought.

So, he spent months researching and reading everything he could find on entrepreneurship, marketing, and business management.

Darren, on the other hand, hated reading.

Nobody could get him to read when he was little, and growing up he did what he had to do in school, but outside of that there wasn’t any reading or what seemed to be “learning.”

He went on to get a job at a cleaning business that had a small team, and during his time he got to see how they were operating their entire business.

Within 18 months, he had learned enough about operating a business for him to feel confident starting up his own business. He never even considered himself an entrepreneur.

But being exposed to what he had been exposed to gave him ideas gave him a drive that he hadn’t had before.

Max had an idea for a software startup that would change the way people worked by providing an all-in-one solution for task management, file sharing, and real-time messaging.

Darren, on the other hand, had a simpler idea: a cleaning service that would cater to homes in Austin, Texas.

Max threw himself into his work. He spent weeks, even months, researching and planning, creating the wire frames, story boards and everything that comes along with building a web-based app.

He read every book he could find on the topic and enrolled in a few courses.

He attended seminars and workshops.

But the more he learned, the more overwhelmed he became.

Every time he thought he had everything figured out, he would stumble upon another book or seminar that made him question his approach.

He became paralyzed by his own knowledge, unable to take the first step.

“If you can wait a year, you can make a ton of money.

If you can wait a decade, you’re going to be above the 1%.

If you can wait a lifetime, and you don’t even need to see the results of your doingness, even while you are alive, but know that it may get done after you pass, then you can change the world.

The problem is, most people spend years delaying the first hour.” — Alex Hormozi

Darren, on the other hand, jumped right in.

He put together a basic website, printed out some flyers, and started cold-calling potential clients.

And when I say cold calling, I mean spending 10+ hours a day dialing phone numbers.

He watched a few videos on how to do it, but he didn’t spend anymore than an hour or two learning the basics of how to conduct a cold call.

At first, it was tough. He sucked, bad.

For the first three weeks he couldn’t book an appointment with anybody.

He faced rejection after rejection, and he struggled to get his first client.

But he didn’t give up.

He just “embraced the suck” and kept at it, day after day, until finally, he landed a big partnership with a local real estate agency that would refer him clients for all of their jobs. From there, his business took off.

Max, meanwhile, was still reading.

He had learned so much, but he had never put any of it into practice.

He had let his fear of failure hold him back, and in the end, he had nothing to show for all his learning.

18 months went by, and Darren’s cleaning service was thriving.

He had a team of 12 employees and a steady stream of clients due to the partnership with the real estate company, which was thriving itself.

Max, on the other hand, had given up on his startup.

He had learned so much, but he had never put any of it into practice.

He had let his fear of failure hold him back, and in the end, he had nothing to show for all his learning.

Fast forward three years, Darren was a millionaire and Max was still a “side business” type of guy earning $60k a year.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it ain’t being a millionaire.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” — Confucius

Now… although this story is fiction, the lesson here is not.

Reading books, watching webinars, attending seminars are great and all, but the reality is these acts are mental masturbation disguised as “learning.”

When it comes down to how your brain actually works, true learning comes from doing.

The doers will always learn more than the readers and seminar junkies.

If you find yourself attending every training, reading every book but going absolutely nowhere with real world results then you have learned very little.

Nobody in human history has ever learned how to swim by reading a book on it.

The learning is in the doing.

Don’t be like Max.

Be like Darren.

And I end this with a simple question,

Have you been mentally masturbating this whole time?