About 7 years ago I posted my first post on this blog – One Book A Month. In it I make the point of the importance of reading and constantly learning: the person that stops learning that stops living. I attribute a lot of my success to the fact that I constantly try to learn new things.

But, as with everything, it’s possible to push this too far. I’ve read around 20 books in 2014, listened to hundreds of podcasts and read countless blog posts. I never liked “wasting time” – not a lot of TV watching, not playing games, etc. Instead I had this urge to keep learning.

I recently realized that this habit has become busywork. I kept filling my time. Learning helps, but sometimes enough is enough.

What was I getting out of all of this learning?

After all, does it matter that I’ve read every book on technology X if I never use it? I can keep reading every post Amy Hoy wrote and swallow Just Fucking Ship in a day, but if I never ship what good is it? If I read 10,000 pages, but didn’t act – did I really read anything?

If you have to ship – ship, don’t read

I decided to actively spend less of my time consuming. Even though it is intellectual consuming and not time wasting per se, it sums up to the same result. I will focus more of my time to writing blog posts, side projects, etc. With this, I hope, I will build up once more a habit of shipping fast and often.

Will it make a big difference? Only time will tell, but I believe it will. And don’t get me wrong, I’ll probably still read a handful of books, since that really is my hobby, but I’ll treat it as a hobby and so will make sure it doesn’t eat up too many hours that could have been invested in laying out the bricks to getting myself someplace better.