Do you want to create value and wealth for your life? If so, you need to follow the 70/30 rule.
What is this 70/30 rule all about? Well, most of us spend more time-consuming content and learning new stuff instead of producing. If we really want to be successful and start creating value to other people, we need to make this shift and turn this proportion upside down. We need to start to produce 70% of our time and leave the other 30% to learn and consume new stuff.
Wanna know more about this rule? Watch the video to find out.
John: Hey, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com. I got a question from Gabriel here about producing things versus learning. I think this is a good question because a lot of people fall on one end of this or they don’t know where to go with this. Gabriel says, “Howdy John. Just listened to your latest podcast about setting a focus and I found it very useful. Recently I’ve also been struggling with deciding what to focus on and the podcast reminded me that it’s important to focus on just one or 2 big tasks everyday which will have the biggest impact and then smash those tasks out. Thanks for the timely reminder. I have a small further question relating to the balance between consuming and learning information vs. creating. I feel that both are necessary but I’m finding it difficult to determine a balance. It seems easy to learn/consume information. I listen to podcast while walking to and from work and while working out. I watch PluralSight videos and reprogramming/career development books while on the train and in evening at home all learning/consuming. The only time I really create anything is while I’m at work and this is only because I have to. Learning is just so much more fun and easier but I do recognize the need to create things, to demonstrate knowledge and provide value. Any thoughts on a good ratio of learning vs. creating, also, do you have any suggestions on ways to fit more creation time into your day? Obviously creating requires more focus than learning so how do you carve out time for that? As always, thanks for the thoughtful responses. Cheers, Gabriel.”
So Gabriel, there’s definitely a balance between creating and consuming and learning. The balance really, surprisingly, should be on the creation side for most people and I’ll tell you why. One of the things—I’ve talked about this quite a few times especially in my Soft Skills book is that when you’re teaching something to someone that’s really how you solidify things in your mind. That’s really where the learning sets in. That’s where you go from knowing something to understanding something.
If you don’t do the teaching which is kind of the creating, producing, right, then you’re not going to achieve that. Also, we learn mostly like there’s myths about the learning styles but most of us really learn by doing things, right? The most effective way to learn is to do, is to take action. Really, the best way that you can improve your skills and learn is actually by producing. Not only that, but producing also has a side effect of it helps other people and it can produce income or something for you, right? The more blog posts I write or YouTube videos I do the better that Simple Programmer becomes and the bigger of an opportunity it becomes for me so I want to produce a lot of stuff. The same thing when I was doing PluralSight courses, right?
But that doesn’t mean—so then you might be asking, well, how can I just produce stuff if I’m not learning things? The answer is that again it comes down to this. I’ve talked about this a few times but when you’re trying to learn something you should be learning for a purpose which is should be something that you’re trying to do, right? They’re kind of connected, right?
You shouldn’t just read books or listening to audio books or whatever for no purpose at all. I mean you could do that occasionally to absorb information but a lot of your dedicated time that you’re studying, that you’re consuming information should be to learn something for a specific purpose so that you can use it. If your purpose is to produce some content then you’re double ending it, right? You’re getting the benefit of learning, but you’re also teaching at the same time and producing something and that’s going to have a greater impact and result.
I would honestly say that you should be spending probably 70% of your time producing and then 30% of your time learning. You’re going to go through phases. Like I said they’re really a connected process. In order to be able to produce stuff you need to learn so you need to learn enough to be able to do what you’re trying to create or produce. That’s why you should be doing things like writing blog posts, if you’re doing videos or Screencast or something like that, writing software, the more that you do that the better that you’re going to get at it.
A good example is I could—let’s say that I wanted to get good at golf. I can read a bunch of books about golf and learn everything that I want to learn about golf but I’m really going to get good by practicing. Then once I’m actually doing stuff, I’m actually practicing, then reading supplemental information is going to help me because it’s going to answer questions I have, I’m actually going to be able to apply it to what I’m doing as opposed to if I just started reading books about golf, I wouldn’t get any better at golf. The same thing works in a lot of ways.
I would definitely say try to be a producer. Too many of us are consumers, right? Too many of us consume stuff and we don’t produce anything. Majority of the world is full of consumers and how is that working out for them? Not so well. The people that you see that are doing exceptionally well in life, that are making a lot of money, they’re typically producers, they’re creating something, they’re creating some value. The well can’t be dry. I totally agree there, but spend more of your time producing than consuming and you’re going to have much more success. You’re going to understand and learn things better and you’re going to know what you need to learn instead of just hearing information.
A lot of people listen to a lot of information, they read a lot of books but they don’t absorb it because they have no purpose for it. They have no reason to get this information because they’re not actually doing anything with it. If you’re doing something with it you’re going to get a lot more value out of what you are consuming and you’ll find that you need to consume a lot less. A small amount of content that you consume you can produce a lot from it. That’s how fields and areas expand. It forces you to think, to use your own brain and come up with solutions and come up with things and actually contribute.
Anyway, I hope that helps you Gabriel. I hope that you’ve got a blog. If you don’t you should definitely create one. Anyone out there, if you’re listening watching these videos you should definitely create a blog. Again, you can sign up for my FREE blogging course. Go and do it now. If you have a question for me, email me at john@simpleprogrammer.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. Take care.