In this uniquely personal episode of "Talk Your Sass," Jen Talks Tech confronts the challenge many face - the endless cycle of content consumption without meaningful action. We're diving deep into Breaking the Cycle of Overconsumption And CreatingPathways to Intentional Action.

We talked through the struggle of feeling overwhelmed and stuck, despite having all this abundance of knowledge and plans. She shared her addiction to learning and information gathering, rooted in a childhood focused on achievement, has led to a constant pursuit of more with feeling of not enough.

In this transformative episode, Jen outlines her strategy for breaking free from this cycle. She shares insights from her session with psychotherapist Keely Miracle, who helped her understand the root of her 'not enoughness.

**Key Highlights:**

💎 Jen's realization of the need for action over continuous learning. Learning while doing is key.

💎 Insights from her therapy session, revealing deep-seated reasons behind her behavior.

💎 Practical tips for practicing conscious consumption, including setting learning goals, limiting browsing time, applying the Pareto principle, taking notes, and setting specific actions post-learning.

**Action Steps:**

1. Identify learning goals.

2. Limit browsing time.

3. Apply the 80/20 rule in content consumption.

4. Take comprehensive notes.

5. Define specific actions for applying learned content.

** TechTools Mentioned:**

👩🏾‍💻 Evernote for note-taking.

👩🏾‍💻 Otter for transcribing audio content and taking notes on auto-pilot.

Subscribe to the podcast and join the conversation about living intentionally and embracing the journey of personal growth.

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Follow Me on IG @jentalkstech

For Booking Email: hi@jentalkstech

Welcome back to Talk Your Sass,

the podcast celebrating Black

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women living their best life.

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I'm your host, Jen Talks Tech, aka

Jennaba, your Chief Sass Officer,

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self proclaimed queen of the

selfless service movement, and I'm

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your best life connoisseur, your

life architect, and we're on a

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journey to live our best life, okay?

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We talk about Everything from living

intentionally, finding joy, failing,

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pivoting, and healing, the good, the

bad, and the times when it's not so

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cute, you know, before all the growth

moments when growing gets real.

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Together, let's go on this journey,

living on purpose, in purpose,

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talking our sass, and taking up space.

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Now, this episode is super personal,

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not to say any of my other

episodes are not, but

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I just came back from Probably my

last conference of this year, my

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last conference in a while, like I am

putting myself on a conference course.

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knowledge, , detox.

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I am not going to any conferences unless

I'm speaking, unless I'm on a stage,

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unless I'm invited, flewed out, all that.

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And it's not because I'm against

conferences or I think they're a scam.

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I double down on self

investment, personal development.

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I am a strong believer and advocate

for all things personal development.

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I think that you should be having that.

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a budget in your life for self development

and growth and bettering yourself.

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I probably spent maybe 15 grand since

the end of the pandemic to now, probably

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more, maybe like 20 on self investment

and personal development out of my own

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pocket, not my job or any job or whatever.

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But I've just gotten to this point

where I actually have to take action.

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And do the things that I've learned

about, that I've paid for to learn, that

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I've paid to get in rooms with people

who I wanted to learn from, , paid,

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I paid to learn people's frameworks,

their proven process, their IP, and

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it's time to do something with it.

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It's time to use it and add on to what

I already have and develop my own IP.

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So thank This episode, we're

really talking about moving

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from , intentional action.

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And it's so easy to get caught up on

the internet, on socials, collecting

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endless podcasts, endless posts,

bookmarking them never to go back to them.

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It happens to the best of us.

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Look, it happens to me all the time.

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You get caught up spending hours

taking it all in, but you're not using

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it in any type of way or you're not

acting on it in any meaningful way.

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So we just get caught in this cycle of

consuming content over and over again

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and not taking any purposeful actions.

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You know, being just information

gathering, scrolling, addicted

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to consuming content and tips

and apply and never applying that

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knowledge and turning it into action.

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And I feel like the more and more we stay

in that space and in that cycle, we just

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become consumers and never producers.

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And I know personally, I want

to be on the production side.

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I want to be the one.

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Sharing and telling and educating

and influencing, not always

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being influenced to and sold to.

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So, yeah, I got to get my

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And this is why you're not going to

see me saying I went to any conferences

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right now or in the near future.

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tHis summer I knew

something was really wrong.

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I needed to take action.

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I was just...

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Feeling like super stuck and I really

couldn't unpack why I felt like I had

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all these plans information knowledge,

but I kept fumbling the bag on the action

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part and so Keely miracle who is awesome.

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If you guys aren't Instagram

go ahead and look her up

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I went to her summer

group therapy session.

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She is a Psychotherapist she

practiced nor new row Neuro intuitive

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methods and hypotherapy practices.

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She was having a session.

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I knew at this point in my, mental

health, mental wellness journey, like

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I'm, I'm obsessed about brain development,

cognitive behavior, like how your brain

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actually works, what you can do to.

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Have your brain in good health,

brain health practices, brain health

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development, growing new brain cells.

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Like I'm all about it.

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I'm super into it.

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, so when I saw her come across

my algo, I was tapped in.

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I did a 60 minute session.

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Um, she was having these

like summer sessions.

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I did a 60 minute session.

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She helped me unlock some.

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Things she gave me a read y'all

some things that I didn't even know

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that I still had or still needed

to do She basically told me while

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This trait is very good It's also

deeply rooted in not enoughness or

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me Subconsciously believing i'm not

enough Because I'm constantly seeking

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more and more information, knowledge,

learning, and it's never enough.

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Like, I'm, I'm all, like, I'm

pretty much addicted to it.

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Like, I, I, I, I gotta do it.

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Right?

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And there's a little bit

of self sabotage in there.

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Spillover from childhood.

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I grew up in a very achievement

heavy household and culture where

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everything is about achievement, and

everything is connected to, like,

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what you do and not who you are.

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As a person so i'm still getting over that

still healing working my way through that.

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At some point though With this not

enoughness, although it's like a it's

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a treat that I truly love about myself

at some point With it, with when, when

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I say that, I mean, like, as it relates

to learning and information hoarding

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and being a content snob, right?

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At some point, it manifests

as being overwhelmed and

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overloaded with information.

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It becomes a cognitive burden.

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And then that's why I was stuck.

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So it's a gift and a curse

because my love of knowledge, my

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ability to learn, consume, digest,

compartmentalize info very quickly.

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, I can learn anything y'all.

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Quick, it's figureoutable.

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It's one of the top things

I love about myself.

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So let me get into How I'm working

through this, getting through this

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and trying to balance the information

overload and overwhelm and not enoughness

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with still pursuit of knowledge

and just in time learning, right?

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I am going to be doing

practicing conscious consumption

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everybody loves content, videos,

podcasts, YouTube, whatever, right?

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Great content that make our lives

better, make us live our best life.

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But, you know, too much of it, it

could be an addiction, it's like,

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it's too much down the rabbit hole.

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Then you have too much information,

you don't know what to do with it.

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Now, let me give y'all some

signs, y'all know I always got.

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The tea, the facts, the data.

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Let me give you some signs that you

might be down a rabbit hole or you're

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in a trap of information overload.

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You're in a cycle.

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You frequently feel overwhelmed by all

of the emails, articles, videos, info,

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bookmarks, saved stuff that you have.

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Your list is endless.

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You keep adding to those podcasts,

newsletters, emails, content,

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but you don't go through them and

you don't do anything with them.

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You accumulate half read books and then

you bookmark them to check out later,

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you don't do it., Friends and family

complain that you're always glued to

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the screen reading something, but then,

again, you never do nothing with it.

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You're up all night binging content.

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Even though you should go to bed.

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You feel restless or anxious when you

have to take a break from consuming

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content and you constantly check your

feeds and refresh to see if like new news.

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New information, new

content is there all day.

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So if that sounds familiar, it's

time to talk about some balance and

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some boundaries on how you can start

practicing conscious consumption, right?

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So here's some tips that I'm doing

that you could use to get started on

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your conscious consumption journey.

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And then you can intentionally

and purposefully consume content.

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That aligns with your goals, , and

you can start actually taking action,

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once you consume all this content.

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So here we go, we're gonna have five tips.

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Identify your learning goals and know

what you're consuming the content for.

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Like, what is the purpose of

you consuming the content?

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What are you trying to get better at?

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What skill are you trying to develop?

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, what are you going to do

as a result of learning X?

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And once you identify that, then you can

focus all your reading and listening and

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learning around those things specifically.

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Number two, limit your browsing time.

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Set up those timers, alerts on your phone.

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And don't go over them.

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, this is one of my favorites.

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Number three, apply the Pareto principle.

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That's the 80 20 rule.

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So, focus on the 20 percent

content that you actually need.

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Four, take notes on everything.

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So those goals that you

identified in number one.

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Um, anything that you're learning, take

notes, summarize, rinse, repeat, um, this

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way you can have takeaways and insights

that apply to you personally and what

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you want to do, what your goal for your

learning goal is, , your learning outcome,

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and then you can refer back to it.

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And then number five, give yourself

specific actions that you're going to

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do after you learn whatever you learn

and consume whatever you consume so

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that you can apply what you learn.

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, the goal is to consume less

information overall, and we

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do this by being intentional.

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We do this by, and that,

that really gives us clarity.

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and empowers us in our learning, right?

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Because when you learn and then you

do, learning by doing is really like

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the fastest way to learn anything.

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So when you learn and do,

it's just a confidence boost.

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For yourself.

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It's like building reps and sets

with confidence with, being able to,

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you know, you know, they say if you

can't teach it and explain it to a

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kid, then you didn't really learn it.

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You don't really know it.

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So,

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All of this will just help us in.

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Reducing some of that information overload

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and then a bonus.

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I'm just going to tell y'all a little plan

that I put together to help me shift from

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mindless consumption to again, intentional

learning and some tools that I'm using.

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Of course, I have my

tech, which is Evernote.

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, I use Otter to help record when

I'm listening to podcasts or talks,

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it, it basically transcribes audio

so you can go back and listen to

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that later, pull out your insights.

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I use Evernote to take my notes.

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so yeah, get you some tech, get you

some tools that you could, uh, use

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for your learning and growth journey.

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But let's go, let's run down

these, this, uh, learning plan.

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So you really need to evaluate,

like I said, your current

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social media and online courses.

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Like, is this information

distracting you or helping you?

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I know personally, a lot of

the information that I have

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collected is a distraction.

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So one thing I did

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as soon as I came back from my last I went

in and audited all the emails that I get

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and I unsubscribed from so many people's

emails because their content It's going to

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distract me from doing what I need to do.

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Um, it's going to be like, learn

this, take this, start doing this.

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And it's like, nah, I haven't even

started doing that last thing.

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Like I'm not about to start doing nothing.

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So take an audit of the stuff that

you're consuming and understand

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why are you consuming it?

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And is it making you add on

more things for you to do?

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, we, we talked about setting clear goals

from the content that you're consuming.

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Like, are you trying to learn

digital marketing strategies

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to grow your business?

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Okay, well, then you can only

do like one thing at a time.

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You can't say like you're about to

learn digital marketing strategies, but

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then you're going to learn accounting

because you need to do your bookkeeping.

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Like you can only focus on one thing.

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So you got to block out the

noise of the other stuff.

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And focus on that learning the digital

marketing strategies to grow your

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business, if that's, you know, that

was just the example, but if that's

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your thing, and you can reverse

engineer that, so what do you, what's

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the steps that you need to take

really to learn the digital marketing

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strategies the fastest, , and do that?

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Another thing is like the communities,

that's also a distraction, like

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I'm in 50 million communities and

I also just started going through

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and removing myself from communities

that are not helping me to get to my

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current goals, and my current plans.

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The next thing is prioritizing.

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And removing the noise, focus on a, focus

on like one or two actionable courses,

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quality courses or conferences or whatever

it is that you're using, podcasts,

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whatever you're using to learn and really

tap into the ones that are giving you

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like actionable, tangible takeaways.

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Cause a lot of this stuff

is just noise and talk.

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And then lastly, apply

what you learned like.

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If you're not applying

it, then what's the point?

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Schedule time to actually

apply or do something which

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you learned or take action.

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Schedule time in your schedule to do that.

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A couple other things after setting

your browsing limits, setting

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your consumption limits, identify

like what times of day or what.

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Things send you into a spiral or a rabbit

hole and like remove that, try something

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else, try a different time of day, try,

you know, once you remove that content

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or following those people or getting out

that community, like how easy it is for

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you to get back on track, , you know,

identify that and be aware of that.

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Remove some of these apps, um,

remove some of this stuff from your

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browser that are distracting you.

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So let me know if this helped you, uh,

and you're, if, if you're over consumer

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tap it and let me know if, um, you're

going to implement some of these steps

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and it's, and it's helped you let me know.

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These are just some small tweaks and

little changes that are definitely

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going to make a big impact.

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So I'll let y'all know how it goes

to for me being more mindful of

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my habits, taking more action.

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, Being more of a producer than a consumer.

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Tap in and call me out, y'all.

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If y'all see me going to a conference,

please DM me or y'all see me saying,

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I'm doing this course, please.

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, cause I need accountability.

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If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe.

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Send me a DM.

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In the meantime, keep taking

up space and talking more sass.