“Progress requires unlearning.” ~ James Clear

I really want progress on many goals right now. I want to get better at coding. I want to be competent and confident enough to look at a business opportunity and say, oh I can code a SaaS out of that, in a week! I want to get damn good at marketing, so good that I have more leads and customers than I can manage. I want to be great at running a business, at earning recurring revenue and profits. So much revenue that I can reach that moonshot goal of $1mil annually. So much that I go from having enough, to actually being rich.

So if Mr Clear is correct about progress, what do I need to unlearn then?

With coding, I need to unlearn my old ways of schooling and learning, and be bold to pick things up in unconventional ways. No need linear courses, step by step building up of fundamentals. Our brains and knowledge are networked, not hierarchical. It’s okay to jump around a network of knowledge nodes, as long as it’s self-reinforcing and allows me to progress. It’s not about what I “should” be learning when it comes to coding, but what I “must” learn; what I want to learn, am drawn to learn, am passionate to figure out. 

With marketing, years of bad experiences with slimy salespeople, telemarketers and scam artists had made me recoil in disgust with anything marketing. I need to unlearn that. We all market ourselves in our work and daily lives, one way or another. Smiling at a colleague, saying good morning, is marketing. Some ways are annoying, others are okay. Find the ones that are okay, and go do those. In fact, if I had worked this long already in the work world, I would have probably employed marketing tactics that come naturally to me, suits my personality, and leverages on my strengths. Repeat those, drop the other “growth hacks” bullshit that opportunists loves to parade.

Earning money and being rich suffer a similar fate like marketing. Negative impressions from early life lead to a response that holds back my own potential. Like how we all hate billionaires, and therefore, anyone who can be called rich.  They are often deemed as greedy bastards who just take and take, while the rest of us live with less. Meeting enough well-off folks in my early life confirmed the fact that I didn’t like them and didn’t want to be like them. And that’s how my relationship with money formed from a young age. Best to not have too much, just have enough for a comfortable life. But I see it clear enough now. Money is value-neutral. The number in your bank account, or your networth, isn’t defining or damning. It’s how you act and what you do with the money that’s value-laden. That.

So, as much as I got loads to learn about coding, marketing and earning money, there’s also so so much to unlearn. In fact, if you ask me, the unlearning bit is probably more critical in unlocking progress than the learning, because that goes deeper. Much deeper, into the emotional and attitudinal knots we carry with us, roadblocks that we throw before ourselves unknowingly, distancing us from the success, and most importantly, the personal growth we deserve.

Learn to unlearn.