Too many great teachers are out there. I have so many choices and so little time.

How do I pick? Where do I start?

The problem lies in the question. I am not asking the right question. I am saying, “So much I can learn, where do I start?” I love subjects like mental toughness, productivity, goals, finding purpose. Again, I’m asking the wrong question. I’m asking, “What do I want to learn?” I should be asking, “What do I want to do?”

I remember my kid’s swim team t-shirt slogan, “If you want to swim faster, swim faster.” First do it. Get out there and give it a try. Want to be a better Dad? Start with something simple and give it a try. Spend time with your kids. You’ll struggle to find time. Then you know what to learn, time management or setting goals.

You might hesitate and pick something out of your control. Maybe you want to get promoted at work? Maybe you want to be offered your dream job? Okay. I agree it’s a little different. What does the person in the role or in the job do? How do they dress? How do they behave? What do they look like? Can you start to do what they do and get better at it?

Have you heard edge cases make bad law? It means if you design laws based on events that seldom occur, you’ll have a law that’s bad for nearly everyone. If you are thinking you agree with me some but what about that one thing, then you are trapped in edge cases. Come back to the useful, the applicable?

What do you want to do? Such a more useful question than what do you want to know. Knowing precedes doing, but you might be learning the wrong thing if it isn’t focused on the doing.

If you try to learn a programming language, I suggest you find a problem to solve and work backwards. Learn what you need to know to solve the problem. Don’t just attempt to learn the language.

If you want to eat apples, learn to climb trees. A friend introduced me to his beautiful wife and explained that’s why he learned Spanish. I have never forgot his lesson.

It is easier to focus on the learning. Schools get stuck here because it’s too hard to have real-world labs where students can experiment. Of course, it isn’t an absolute. You need a foundation, and that’s where school is perfect. After the foundation is laid, we need to find problems to solve.

We learn to drive because we want to go places. We don’t really care about cars. Where do you want to go? What do you want to have? What do you need to do in order to have it? What do you need to learn in order to do that? Want to be more motivated to learn? Focus on the doing.