I can take a guess and bet that most of you who read my blog and the other blogs out there on personal development get some sort of “high” with every new article. When I say “high”, I mean in the sense of empowerment. To go even further, you feel as if you are doing yourself a favor by learning about new ways to take your life to the next level. Now, the obvious question is, are you? After you read one of my powerful articles, do you really go back to “reality” and take action on this new information you just learned about? Has there even been a time when you read an article, then just forgot about it?
“Forget it about it”
Chances are that you’ve read dozens and dozens of articles on the web about how to do “this”, what to do with “that”, and 18 million steps to be “something”, etc. Do you ever get an empty void type of feeling that tells you, “I need more…”? The truth of the matter is that most of the stuff you read, whether it be online, in a book, or at a seminar, you will forget about within 1 hour to give or take a few days. You, like most other people, just have that feeling inside that tells you to keep reading, keep studying, and wait until you have everything single bit of information you need, before you take action. Why is that? The answer lies in the ‘fear department’. It could be you fear of failure, rejection, success or a number similar issues. So let me start by saying that the average person will usually forget almost 80% of the information they learn every day. Chances are by the end of this day, you will probably forget most of what you’re learning from this article. Well it’s wasn’t necessarily your fault in the past, but it will be after you finish reading this…
Take Action
The most successful people on the planet can take bits and pieces of information from a few pages in a book and implement it in their business right a way. Not only that, but these types of people are not afraid of failing. In fact, one must fail forward fast if your interest is in growing and moving forward.
Here are different ways we learn according to the William Glasser’s Institute.
- 10% What we READ
- 20% What we HEAR
- 30% What we SEE
- 50% What we SEE and HEAR
- 70% What we DISCUSSED with OTHERS
- 80% What we EXPERIENCED PERSONALLY
- 95% What we TEACH TO SOMEONE ELSE
Obviously the best way for you to retain information is by teaching someone, but how can one teach someone something they haven’t done themselves. So what the statistics above should tell you is that the sooner you learn something new, the faster you better take action on it, since the quicker you do, the better you’ll understand it. As you begin to shift your mindset to this new style of thinking, I want you to go back to a time when someone told you to do something and you did it. What happened? Were you instantly satisfied with the results? Let’s take the time you learned to drive a car. You read about it, you took action and followed through with what you read and then you practiced it. Sooner or later after that moment, you practically mastered it or at least allowed yourself to do it as if it were second nature. Pretty powerful, isn’t it?
Since your beginning to understand the urgency of this issue, I need you trust me and pay attention to what I have to say. After you read this article, I want you to read one of my previous articles immediately take action. It’s very simple guys and gals, learn something new and do it right away. If you don’t, then consider yourself to be as useful as a computer, full of information, but you probably won’t make a dime off of it. I guarantee that if you do what I say, you’ll see better results than you would by reading 5 books back to back.
To recap, read an article of mine or even someone else’s for all it matters and figure out a way to apply it in your life seconds or even moments after your finish reading it. Write a comment and share your experiences with me below.
Nice post I find your articles extremely helpful in the game of life we play Thank You.
I forget things soon as i read them.
what was this article about?
I admire aj kumar
what did you right about again?
Nice 😉 I should of saw comments like this coming, huh?
Most people forget about things immediately after they read something…that's why it's a good idea to try and explain to someone right away.
Very true. I've read hundreds of articles and rarely do I implement them but when I do, the results always improve my life. This is my first time on your site and the first blog post I've ever read from you. I look forward to actually applying some of the useful info. from your blog.
Great Julian, I'm glad to hear that! The goal with my articles is to provide you with some info you can use and take away from and implement right away. The next time you read an article, bookmark it. Apply what you learn, then write a comment about your experience. Sharing you experiences will not only help you remember it, but it will allow you to get feedback from me or other readers on what you can do to improve. That's what it's all about 🙂
I recently became aware that I am an info junkie. It’s so fun:-) What this article says is SO true. If you don’t use it, you lose it. I am working on this.
Thank you.
Joe
Glad to hear it Joe, let me know how it helps 🙂
Pingback: The Fear of Rejection Explained
Could you please activate your rss feeds? Thanks
Hi Ajay, it’s the first time that i read you. In fact i come to your article from google search: information junkie.
Congratulations for your article, really deep and practical ta the same time. I liked to me. I will search now more articles from you.
But, said this, i must disagree a little with you. I don’t think that you “forget” so easily what you read or see. It’s also true that our mind neither record our experiences exactly as a camcorder.
Our mind works in another way. In fact, ONLY for understand what we are reading we MUST to have some previous knowledges BUILT (not stored!) in our mind. Easy example: if you don’t know how to read some language (eg. english) you cannot understand a blog article in such language!
But, in fact, the thing is more complex: not only you must to have some previous abilities/knowledges for understand a new article, but furthermore you probably must to “modify” them for “make a place” for the new info.
Easy example: you are reading new historical facts that are against your previous knowledges about some historical question. You have 2 options: refuse the new data or review your previous data and try to understand what exactly was wrong on it… because probably not ALL the data you had was wrong.
I’m sorry if my explanation is hard to understand… i’m not native english writer, and the topic of our conversation is a bit complex 😉
In any case, for recap, we BUILT our knowledge and everey day every moment our knowledge evolve!! is like a live ent, really…! you can read in psychological studies, things like our memory about our own personal past is completely “deformed” by our mind. And in fact, our memory really is not useful for REMEMBER EXACTLY FACTS, it’s an smart and sophisticated system of ASSIMILIATION of the most interesting aspects of our experience for traduce it in terminal and action terms, just as you precisely propose!!! :)))
So, don’t worry, Ajay, natively our mind trend to take from the experience (see, read, hear, discuss, etc..) anything “understandable” in that moment for us and specially USEFUL for our habitual and actual activities… It’s a rule of survival !
So, in this point is on i disagree: we forget 80% every day what learned. Mmmm… probably the person who make the study understand the “memory” as a camcorder machine, but really is not a real perception of how run our memory/mind.
I find more correct say that we can take more or less profit with one article or other we read, or with one discussion or other we have, and then the best tip could be: to take as much “sources of information interaction” as you can get in a day/week, and probably (almost sure!) we will take some profit… sometimes a great and revolutionary transform of our knowledge, and sometimes little changes which someday will let a great change.
I love be an Information Junkie 😉
Cheers!
And i apologise by the extension of my comment.
SERGI
Way cool! Some extremely valid points! I appreciate you penning this post plus the rest of the website is also really good.