MASTER VS OVERLOAD of Information: How To Stay Motivated With Wealthy Affiliate
Are you the type of individual that is able master bite sized information and implement it easily?
Or..
Are you the type of individual that consumes large amounts of information and leaves most of it unimplemented into your daily life?
We live in "the information age" thanks to the internet. We have access to so much information and knowledge than ever before in history. Especially in a community such as Wealthy Affiliate where lessons and advice on how we can improve blogging are definitely at a SURPLUS.
This surplus is not necessarily always a bad thing. It is nice to have any information we may desire at our fingertips but it can be bad thing. It can be bad when we become over whelmed by it and use it to gage our own level of knowledge and success.
When i began my journey here there was times i compared my self to every successful blogger here at Wealthy Affiliate. I seen all the information and lessons available and began to feel over powered like fighting an up hill battle.
But then i received some advice that changed my perspective.....
Perspective is everything! I was advised not to compare my self to others because we only see the end results of years of experience when we see the work pumped out by successful bloggers. I was also informed about the concept of Mastery vs Overload.
A mentor explained that he would rather master 3 essential profit producing activities that produce results, rather than learn large quantities of information and not be able implement any of them to the point of mastery.
Thus the concept of Mastery Vs Overload was introduced to my daily activities. It is better to maximize your efforts and energy on worth while tasks as opposed to spreading all of your energy out on things that result in less impact.
For example the 80/20 rule or commonly know as Pareto's Law explains this nicely:
"states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes" and vise-versa. Roughly 20% of the effect and impact comes from 80% of the causes.
As we are beginning to acquire new knowledge and learning to blog here at Wealthy Affiliate certain activities may produce more impact in the begging than others such as:
- Just Creating Content
- Embedding SEO Keywords
- Networking on Other Blogs
- Commenting on Other Blogs
As opposed to:
- An Absolutely Perfect Web Design
- The Perfect Scholarly Terminology
- The Most Awesome Domain Name
- The Perfect Affiliate Article
Although, some may very well be able to accomplish perfection in all they do, generate large amounts of traffic right off the bat and make sales early on. ThIs is not out of the question and should be the goal. We should all strive to be sufficient and successful.
But if you are like me that takes time and persistence to attain. So, in order to avoid hitting a wall, information overload, burn out and giving up, pick your battles to create momentum. Create momentum by mastering a few areas of knowledge so that you can better tackle larger battles in the future like that FIRST SALE, THAT LARGE AND LOYAL FOLLOWING, or THAT WORLD CLASS BLOG DESIGN.
I personally have gathered alot encouragement and insight from taking bite sized information and focusing on those. It was not until I did this a few times that i then began to really see results in blogging very attainable and knowledge as a blogger more digestible.
This is my experience so far as i climb the learning curve & learning a new skills from every one here in the Wealthy Affiliate community.
If you an experienced blogger or beginning i would really like to converse with you on this subject. I love networking and learning from like minded people so leave me a comment with any thoughts and feed back everyone:)
Recent Comments
11
Good interpretation of a logical approach! It is hard to not be overwhelmed. However the bite sized chunks is a practical approach. Also allowing yourself to progress at your own personal speed to insure that you are going forward!
Sami
Hey Adrian, I am totally with you on this. We all strive for that little piece of perfection. I think this can be a good thing though. Quality over quantity every time. It's nice to have a lot of posts racked up on your site but the question is how valuable they are to your visitor. This is a great topic and I look forward to hear some more views on this.
Cheers
Darwyn
I appreciate your thoughts and feedback Darwyn, I am experiencing a big learning curve, at the same time finding it enjoyable because i have been able to network and learn from others in the process. Certainly found it more manageable as well to focus on what works in the blogging world. Like there are plenty of things that will improve a car's value, but what will make that car serve its function the best. So, in a sense what would it do for us to invest our energy into the gas, oil, and fluids of our blogs. So it helps to pin point that in my early journey. Thanks again Happy Holidays Darwyn
Not bad Adrian, very good information here for the newbies!
In regards to mastery I believe it requires 12,000 hours of DOING, not reading, not thinking about, not contemplating but actually DOING the thing you want to master to get to the level of master, thats a little over 8 years at 4 hours a day, grinding the same blog.
I think a lot of people expect the training (even though it may be valuable for some, not so much for others) to be a copy and paste business, unfortunately they lack the business aspect of their "business".
The biggest common misconception (and I thought this to when I first began) was that if I followed the training I'd reach my goal of $1000 a month like everyone else who says it within 6 months, but just like any business, it needs a plan, it needs a foundation, it needs a customer (not customers - this concept is redundant, all successful businesses have 1 customer in mind that they market to, it is their ideal customer, the person that needs/wants the thing they sell (they created the thing they sell because of their ideal customer)).
An example is (and I used this earlier helping someone out with this very issue) Bob.
Now who is Bob and what does he like?
Bob is black, he likes Nachos, the L.A Lakers, he's between 25 and 42, he drives a mid-priced car, he loves fitness, he's single and he holds down a full-time job that he's not happy with.
Now you have a clear image of the person you are selling to (after research has been done of course) it is simple to sell to this person, create content for this person and to market to this person.
You'd just do an add that says "Hey you! Did you know they now serve NACHOS at LA LAKERS games!?!? Click here to see if they will be serving NACHOS at a venue near you!".
This might seem like going off on a tangent but it applies directly to the information overload principle. Too many people get too caught up in fancy things like someone said you need to have a keyword in your article 11 times? Or the latest "seo strategies" or the best "link building strategy" all of this is irrelevant if you're talking to the wrong person.
So for everyone that is suffering from information overload or struggling to find your way, it's best to start at business basics, create yourself a Bob and then create all your blog posts, marketing efforts and whatever other fancy pancy ideas you might have.
If you've done it right, Bob will come back for more, because you know what he likes, he's got no reason to go anywhere else.
Hey valuable insight from some one who has been grinding it out and learning from earning and not just reading necessarily. I appreciate the insight. Always helps me to have an over vision when i hear from people on the day to day grind. Those have been in pursuance of a goal and found out first hand what works have highly valuable experience in my opinion. So much noted on this Aiden, hope to hear more soon. Happy Holidays Bud!
Thanks Adrian :).
I think Robert Kiyosaki says it best (this isn't his exact words as I can't remember them word for word lol "if your not succeeding your not failing enough, if you want to be successful faster, start failing faster"
Failing and failure is a change for us to learn, grow and reflect upon what is and isn't working. Every strategy won't work for everyone but every strategy will lay the foundation for everyone to learn.
Don't over complicate things. Start small, see what is and isn't working. Keep doing what is working and slightly change what isn't until it does. Drastic change won't teach you anything because there will be too much difference to compare results. Maybe change your words (different people use different words, appreciate their words as they are the door to people's souls and to what lies behind the wall everyone puts up).
You can tell everything about a person by the words they use. If they use mostly visual words "I see" "look at the view" then reply in visual terms "you have a great vision" this will create rapport and they will unknowingly begin to trust you more (which isn't a bad thing as your not doing this for negative reasons).
Hope this helps :) check out the introduction to NLP if you want to learn how to effectively talk to people it's about $10 on Amazon it also teaches you how to remove limiting beliefs and conquer all fears instantly. Very powerful stuff and can be used in sales more effectively than most trendy techniques.
Interesting stuff, how every one who as arrived at certain level of success has had to go through this process. Only we see their success and not how they learned through trial and error.
Now that you mention it, It is definitely more valuable to learn by building little by little, brick by brick and finding out what works. If we didn't learn this way and ever had to rebuild from scratch or help anyone build from scratch we may not know how.
like the saying who has earned a million can do it again because he knows what it takes.
Even learning to engage with a customer in sales is valuable because it would mean earning their trust and keeping them as a "life long" customer or a "one time" customer.
Again, only something you would learn untill you experience actual process of sales.
Well, glad you took valuable to time for this discussion, thats something not every one is willing to do. So its good to learn along side you. Definitely take a look at the book on amazon as i know you find game changing lesson on your journey.
Catch up with you soon, Aiden
This is exactly why successful people never tell you how they got where they did because it's irrelevant, they simply tell you how to go about your own journey :)
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Well done and said. I made the mistake at the beginning and tried to master everything at once. I am like you, bit size is much easier for me. So after a year of overload with not much accomplished, I have began to step back and concentrate on the smaller bits.