In this episode, we discuss that we need to be patient with our learning as young adults.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about a quote I got from the book Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and that is your 20s are for learning and your 30s are for earning. I think this a very good perspective to have as someone who is young. I remember being in my early 20s and wanting to be successful fast and I never found it, to the level that I wanted. Sure I did cool stuff and have a lot of good memories but I didn’t realize that it would take so much effort to be really successful.
But after hearing the quote by Keith Ferrazzi and reading other books, I realized that I just have to be okay with the process. As long as I’m working towards my goals that is all I can do. In my early 20s, while I was in the Marines, I made sure to go to night school so I could finish my degree faster. So I had that experience.
Then once I got out of the Marines, I was in college for a year, where I was able to do a 12-week study abroad in Mexico. Then I moved to Washington DC and went back to school and I got my personal training certificate while I did that. I also started to read a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcasts. While in DC, I also made sure to go to a lot of events with speakers.
I spent my entire 20s trying to learn to get better and to meet as many folks as I could and get advice when I could. Looking at my life right now, I don’t think I could be doing what I am doing right now if I didn’t spend my entire 20s basically learning. And the author Robert Greene, after writing his book, The Laws Of Human Nature, said that people typically are their most creative in their early 30s.
I think it is pretty creative how Grow With Joe is a company that combines self-development coaching with financial planning but I wouldn’t have to be able to think of this if I didn’t spend all my time learning. Now I’m trying to take advantage of this opportunity by building something. I feel like I can have a pretty good life where I have flexibility and control over my life when I make this Grow With Joe business a success.
The key things are that you should just spend a lot of time learning new things about the world and yourself as early as possible. If you didn’t spend the time, then start as fast a possible. In this new economy, you don’t have to worry about gatekeepers like in the past, but you do have to put yourself out their more with marketing yourself. The learning comes first though, and then the earning will come.
Remember that it takes about 10,000 hours to become a master in your field. And if you work 8 hours a day, five days a week, it will take you about 4.5 years to become a master. And since you probably can’t dedicate 8 hours a day, it’s going to take longer. It’s mean you become a master, is when you start earning. We magically can’t go from 0 hours to 10,000 hours overnight, it’s going to require time and work. The time you can’t control, but you can control when you put in the hours. I’m so glad I spent all that time learning because it’s really providing me with opportunities now in my 30s. I can see things becoming successful and it brings me a lot of joy. I read 36 books a year because I was told that is the number of books a CEO reads a year and I’m just following their footsteps. You can’t just passively get the information, you have to take an active role in making things work.
You don’t have to read books, if you want to become a really good artist, then learn how to become a really good artist. I had a roommate that was a really good artist and he would just watch videos on YouTube and then go practice what he watched. He was learning by watching and doing. So whatever field you choose to be in, just spend a lot of time being an apprentice and just learn as much as you can. When the opportunity comes, it will come because you already put in the work. If you don’t then that opportunity will be just picked up by someone else.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, the 20s are for learning and 30s are for earning like Keith Ferrazzi said. I highly recommend that you read his book and I will have a link for the book in the show notes. Just go to growwithjoe.me/episdoe206. Things don’t come overnight for a lot of folks, so you just have to follow the process. There will be some shortcuts that you can take but you got to be able to recognize them and that will come from learning about your environment. You can design your life to be a really good one but it’s going to come from following the process and learning as much as you can about your field.
So in your journal, ask yourself, what is something that you need to learn about? How can learning that thing help you out? Do you need to take an excel class? Do you need to take a leadership class? Do you want to take an art class? Find out where you should spend you time and start learning about that thing. This will help you reach mastery status and start getting paid like a professional instead of an amateur.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me on [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
