Over the long haul, your solopreneur business will change. You’ll go through phases, changing interests and maybe even a change of focus. Instead of being surprised, try to expect this and know that it’s normal.
On of my ongoing evolutions is how I prioritize my time. I’ve spent many, many hours learning in the last two years. I absolutely love to learn new things, and as a coach and consultant it’s vital to my business that I keep my knowledge current. I’ve sampled the work of dozens of coaches and mentors with both paid and free information. Something has shifted for me in the last few months though. I’ve become impatient and felt a tug to be doing more. When I looked at how I spend my time, I realized that I was spending too much time learning and not enough time implementing. Sound familiar?
Many solopreneurs fall into this trap. Sometimes it’s fear of moving ahead because we think we don’t yet know enough. Sometimes learning can be a procrastination tool – it’s easy to sit and listen to a webinar or recording but actually creating something can be hard and tedious. For me, I think learning is just so exciting and inspiring that I want to do a lot of it because I love it.
When I first started to prioritize learning about 2 years ago, it was the right choice. I did need to up my skill set and knowledge both for my own business and for my clients. There came a point in the last few months though, where I would get impatient during my daily study sessions. It was almost a feeling of “enough already, go do something!”
It wasn’t until I set aside some quiet time and took a look at my time and priorities and did some realigning. The main thing I shifted was to change the balance between learning and doing. Up until now, it’s been mostly learn with a little doing. Now I’m aiming for mostly doing with some learning.
The reality is that you’ll never know everything about running a solopreneur business. There will always be lots more to learn. There will come a point though, when more learning needs to be balanced out with more doing. Continuing to study without using what you are learning will not help your business. I think sometimes the sheer volume of information available to us plays on our insecurities. It seems like since we know such a small portion of what we could know that we couldn’t possibly know enough to run a business. Don’t believe it though!
Have you been learning without doing? Is it time for a shift? Tell me about it in the comments.