Learning requires both: information that matters to your life and the willingness to get your hands dirty with it.
As I drove down a winding backcountry road, the sun warmed the windshield, and I noticed a truck up ahead. In the passenger seat, a dog had its head out the window, ears flapping, absorbing the wind and passing landscape. For a moment, I imagined that dog as free, chasing some unseen rabbit in a field. But then I realized it wasn’t free at all. It had no control over where it was going. It simply followed the car’s course, never steering itself, never exploring beyond the moment.
In that instant, I realized how much of our learning mirrors that dog’s ride. We hop online, scrolling through social media, snatching up life hacks and quick tips. Just like that dog, we’re carried along, momentarily thrilled by the rush of new sights. The dog sees the rabbit. It watches it pass. But it can’t chase it. The car keeps moving, and the moment is gone.
We do the same thing scrolling through our feeds. We become mesmerized by skills, tips, and ideas that have nothing to do with the life we’re actually living. I once saw a post about navigating through a dense jungle by using a river as a guide, an intriguing hack, but completely useless for me. I’m not trekking through a rainforest; I’m commuting between meetings in a concrete sprawl.
A friend once told me they were preparing their children for homesteading, raising chickens, and tending land. That’s relevant. That’s something they actually wanted to do. I commended them for showing their kids the videos; it seemed like a great start. But when I asked how it was going, whether their kids were actually learning to do it, they said, “Well, they’ve watched How-To videos.” As if that was enough.
And in that moment, I realized something vital: relevance isn’t enough. Just watching videos doesn’t give them the visceral experience, the feel of the feathers, the weight of responsibility. No video can replicate the moment you face a real animal, the tension, the empathy. They had the right information for their goal, but they skipped the doing.
Learning requires both: information that matters to your life and the willingness to get your hands dirty with it.
So here’s what matters: choose learning that applies to your life right now and that you can actually practice. Build your foundation with what’s real and experiential in front of you. That’s how you move from consuming information to building competence.