Every so often, I come across an article which perfectly reflects my thoughts on a particular topic. Most of the time, that means the article is rather unenlightening for me, but occasionally seeing the idea expressed in writing by someone else makes me realise I act in a way that does not align with my values.

That’s what I experienced when reading this blogpost by Ratika Deshpande. I love learning and exploring new ideas by reading. Sometimes the goal is entertainment, like when I get interested in an obscure hobby. But often the goal is to improve my life and to become a better version of myself. I can only achieve the latter by actually taking action based on what I learn about.

As I am increasingly busy with the responsibilities of adulthood, most of the learning I’ve been doing recently did not result in any changes. There is nothing wrong with learning for the sake of learning and it’s still interesting and useful to expose myself to a variety of points of view and ideas. It allows me to form my own opinions and build a knowledge base I can draw from when concepts I once dismissed become relevant to my situation. However, taking action is what can actually change my life. I want to focus on results, not on getting satisfaction from merely having opinions. As Ratika puts it:

Me reading about and thus becoming aware of a problem doesn’t fix the problem until and unless I do something about it. If there’s no change in my actions, then I might as well have not read it at all.

The only thing left for me to do is to take action on this realisation…