MBA1015 Q&A Wednesday: How much time should I spend consuming content?

Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that makes the most out of your daily commute with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and a Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from you, one of our listeners. Today's question is from Paul and Paul asks, how much time should I spend consuming content? That's a great question, Paul. We all want to get better as entrepreneurs, but we want to find that right balance between production and consumption. In today's lesson, I'm going to be answering this question. I'm also going to be defining learning because you can learn without consuming content as well as how. I've kind of worked out my own formula when it comes to balancing out how much content I should be absorbing, I should be taking on, I should be consuming every day as well as how much time I should be spending actually implementing what I'm learning. I get into all that in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode of the $100 MBA show is supported by Earth Class Mail. If you run a business, you need a business address, but it doesn't mean you need to open up a business office. You can work from Home and Earth ClassMail can hook you up with a business address and scan all your mail and upload it to your account in the cloud so you can check all your physical mail anytime, anywhere. I love it. I love it. I love it. And we use Earth ClassMail because we love it so much. And Earth ClassMail wants to hook you up with a free month to get started. Just go to earthclassmail.com mbamont Again, it's earthclassmail.com mbamonth Use coupon code mbamonth. So Paul asks, how much time should I spend consuming content? It's actually a pretty meta question because I'm producing content right now and you're consuming it. But seriously, we're going to discuss how much time should you really spend taking in new information, learning new stuff via content. Now, speaking of the show, one of the biggest reasons why Nicole and I decided to make this a short format show and keep our content down to about 10 minutes a day is because we want to save you as much time as possible and give you as much information in the shortest amount of time possible. Because I'm a big believer, spending too much time consuming content is not a good thing. There's only so much information you can pour into your brain before it just overflows and it becomes sort of useless. One of the things I learned as a teacher for 13 years, yes, an actual classroom teacher is the best way to consume information is to break it up into inputs and outputs. Meaning that when you input information in your brain, you need to also use the information and output, create something, do something with it, implement that information. That's how you really learn something, is when you actually use it. But if you constantly input, input, input, and never output, never actually do something with that information, that information consciousness evaporates. Have you ever read a book that was really great and insightful and helpful, but really never had an action plan to implement some of the things that were in there? And then a few years later you stumble upon the same book and you start to read it again, you're like, wow, I hardly remember any of the stuff and it's because you didn't use it. So that's one thing I really wanted to make sure I emphasize at the start of today's episode. The other thing is that there's a difference between consuming content and learning. Because you can learn without watching videos or reading books or taking courses. Yes, those are really solid ways to learn something. But experience is really the best teacher. When you do something, when you put a website together, you're learning an incredible amount of stuff quickly. When you make your first hire, when you launch your first product, all those experiences are teachers are teaching moments, are experiences that you can reflect upon and extract things and remember those teachings a lot better than just reading it in a book. So for that reason, your production time, the amount of time you spend producing things, doing things, creating things, should definitely outweigh, should be more than your consumption time. This is especially important if you're getting started, if you're building a business, if you're still getting the wheels moving, if your business is well on its way, you have a whole team that's working for you and you have minimal responsibilities. You might be sort of semi retired and you can spend lots of time learning things and consuming content. And you might even pick up things that are not really business related, like learning a musical instrument or learning how to code just for fun. And if that's you, more power to you. But if that is not you, if you're somebody who's trying to put things in place, you're still building your business, you're still not where you need to be. You need to make sure that you consume the right information and you don't spend too much time consuming it. I like the 8020 split. So 80% of my time where I'm quote unquote working, where I'm not eating lunch or you know, eating dinner or exercising or doing anything in my personal life, if I take my work hours, 80% of those hours, I want to be producing things like recording this podcast, like writing sales copy, like writing emails, like working with my team to come up with the next update for our software. This is all production, right? 20% of my time I will allot for consumption. And that can include just googling something, learning how to do something that's consumption. That can include listening to an audiobook, that can include, you know, picking up a course on a topic that I want to improve in. It could be leadership, it could be SEO. The point here is that I don't like to spend more than 20% of my time consuming information. Why? Because any more than that, it's too much. I can't implement. I can't implement what I'm learning. I need bite sized chunks of information. So when I learn it, I can take it on, take notes and add it to my to do list. I got to implement what I just learned. If I learned something new about SEO, I got to implement it to my website. And if the consumption is more than 20% of my time, then that to do list is going to get really long and big parts that are important in my business will be neglected. So when I make the implementation of the content that I consume mandatory, it limits the amount I have to consume or will consume. So 20% is not a little amount of time. Say for example, you work a 10 hour day, 2 hours of consumption is not insignificant. Now having said that, there are times, there are periods during the year where my consumption will be higher and there'll be times when my consumption will be lower. It'll drop down to 10%, maybe even 5%. If I'm working on a launch, working on a new product or a new service or a new feature, my consumption will go down. It'll never be zero. I always like to read a book before bed. I like to listen to audiobooks when I'm working out. And of course we're always googling things or learning how to do things on the Internet. Now the flip side is when I have a break, where I'm going on holiday or I'm taking some time off or it's a day that we allotted in our business for professional development, then consumption time will go up. But again, be mindful. I don't like consuming things that I won't use. Even if I'm reading a book that's just a book to help me change my mindset. The implementation of that is reminding myself of these things. Making notes, writing a post it note, and sticking it on my desk to remind myself of that mindset shift. Discussing that mindset shift with my colleagues, with my business partner, Nicole. You get the point. You have to do something with the information. You can't just consume. That's how you really make the best of it. That's how you actually make use of it. I got more on today's Q and A Wednesday's question how much time should I spend consuming content? But before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. Support for today's show comes from Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams is your hub for teamwork in Office365. Here at the $100 MBA we run a remote team so we have teammates all across the world. And sometimes communicating can be quite hectic. Organizing everything from chats and emails and files. It can get chaotic. With so much to look after, it would be great just to have everything in one place. And that's what Microsoft Teams does. Teams is a single workplace where you can work, share and connect with the people in your work life. Teams brings together chat, meetings, files and apps in one place. Take Teamwork, where you work with apps for mobile and desktop. So whether you're sprinting towards a deadline or sharing your next big idea, Teams can help you and your team achieve more. I recently used Teams and I found the user experience to be so simple and clean. I found it like stress reducing. So I tip my hat to Microsoft Teams for building such a easy to use app. Microsoft Teams in Office365 visit office.comteams to learn more. To wrap up my answer to Paul how much time should I spend consuming content? My favorite rule of thumb is 80% production, 20% consumption. And the way to really control your consumption? Time. Make sure you force yourself to do something with what you actually consume. So if you're reading a book, take notes and and take those notes and turn them into to do's into action items for yourself. And of course you need to be flexible. When things are really busy in your business and production takes a priority, you can drop that number of 20% down to 5% if you have to. And when things are slower or you're on holiday and you want to really enjoy yourself or you want to just, you know, dive into a book you've always wanted to read or catch up on some podcast episodes, then that's a great time to do that and up that percentage more than 20%. Thank you so much for asking that question. I hope I've helped you and hoped I've helped others who had the same question in their head. If you have a question you want to ask here on the show, just email me over at Omar MBA Net. I'd be happy to include it in one of our Q and A Wednesday episodes. And while you're on your computer or on your phone, head on over to itunes or Apple podcasts and leave us an iTunes rating and review. Everybody who leaves us a rating review enters our weekly random draw we call Free Ride. Friday we do a random draw with anybody who's left us a review. And every Friday somebody wins a free ride. They get free access to one of our lifetime courses. This month we're giving away Easy course, a 30 day course on how to build an online course in 30 days. It's a $500 course over at EasyCourse Co, but we're giving it away to somebody who left us a rating review. And we do this every week. So once you leave us a review, you enter the draw for every week. It's our way to say thank you for showing us love and giving us feedback. Alright, thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I'm a huge believer that time is your biggest asset. You can always make more money, but you can't make time what you have today. The hours that we have, it's limited, it's precious. So utilizing your time properly is really a priority as an entrepreneur. Now, this may feel a little bit like a bit of pressure on you, but hey, it levels the playing field. Everybody from Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk to you wakes up every morning with the same amount of hours for the day. 24 hours every day, just like you. How do they and how do you use those hours is really what's going to make the difference in your life and in your business. Hope that helps and hope to see you in tomorrow's episode. I'll check you then. Take care.