Learning More is a Smart Person’s Favorite Way to Procrastinate – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1116
Learning More is a Smart Person’s Favorite Way to Procrastinate – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1116
Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1116 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here.
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Credit: Christina Morillo |
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Credit: Tim Guow |
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Credit: Tranmautritam |
Preamble
I read this line (the topic above) in a technology newsletter ‘Artofrom10web’ that I subscribe to keep updated on the technology side. Immediately, I thought about many people who were doing this and decide to write on it. Sometimes I have also done it.
There’s something suspiciously soothing about opening a new tab to look up a book summary, signing up for yet another online course, or watching TED Talks until your coffee goes cold. It feels like productivity. It smells like progress. It’s got the high-gloss veneer of improvement. But make no mistake: if you’re always learning and never doing, you’re not evolving—you’re just procrastinating with better PR.
Let’s call it what it is: productive procrastination. And smart people, especially those with an alphabet of degrees or an endless appetite for podcasts, are the guiltiest. Because what could possibly be wrong with learning? After all, knowledge is power. Right? Right?
The Eternal Student Syndrome
Meet our Mr. Smart. He is a marketing manager with fifteen years of experience, a bookshelf that could crush a small animal, and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. He has taken every masterclass under the sun; branding, AI, emotional intelligence, even bonsai tree care (you never know when it might be useful). His LinkedIn feed is a shrine to continuous learning.
There’s just one problem: his marketing strategy hasn't changed since 2016.
He knows everything about modern tools, but his team still runs campaigns like it’s the pre-digital media era. When asked about updates, he has a ready answer: "We’re still learning the implications. Once we understand it fully, we’ll act." It’s been three fiscal years.
This is the tragic irony: Smart people are often trapped in an endless loop of preparation. Their mental motto? "Just a little more research, then I’ll do it." But the goalpost always moves. Today it’s an online course. Tomorrow, a webinar. The doing part? That gets scheduled somewhere between "someday" and "after lunch."
Learning as the Brain’s Spa Day
Here’s why this happens. Learning is rewarding. The brain gets a dopamine hit every time it absorbs new information. You feel accomplished without having done anything risky or hard. There are no KPIs for reading a book. No client complaints from watching a lecture. It’s progress without exposure to failure.
Doing, on the other hand, is a messy business. Launching a new project, making a cold call, or presenting an idea involves vulnerability, uncertainty, and risk. It exposes you to feedback, accountability, and the terrifying possibility that your idea might flop.
Corporate Parallels: The Perpetual Planning Meeting
This phenomenon isn't confined to individuals. Whole corporations suffer from this condition, known colloquially as "death by strategy."
Think of a company that spends nine months designing a new internal communication protocol but never actually uses it. Or a leadership team that hosts offsites every quarter to reimagine their vision but never acts on last quarter's action items. They hire consultants, do benchmarking exercises, and fill whiteboards with buzzwords like "synergy," "scalability," and "paradigm shift."
Execution? Oh yes, it's planned. Very planned. Rigorously planned. Just not... executed.
The corporate world has turned planning into a spectator sport. Meetings about meetings. Strategy decks about strategies. Innovation labs that have never produced a single prototype. If you ask them why, they’ll tell you they’re "still evaluating the landscape."
Much like our Mr. Smart.
The Cult of Readiness
We live in an age where readiness is worshipped. No one wants to launch a product until they have airtight market research, perfect UX, and a dozen risk scenarios mapped out. That would be great if the world stood still. But it doesn’t. While you’re preparing, someone else is already doing.
Learning is essential. Preparation matters. But at some point, you need to jump into the water and learn how to swim by splashing around.
A product that’s 70% ready and in the market will always outperform a 100% perfect product still stuck in someone’s desktop folder. The same goes for ideas, proposals, and campaigns.
Smart People, Silly Habits
Let’s go back to our clever, book-devouring, constantly-course-enrolling smart person. Here are a few of their common mantras:
"I can’t start the blog until I take this writing course."
"I shouldn’t lead the team meeting until I read that book on executive presence."
"I need to understand all 200 pages of the AI white paper before we even consider implementing it."
To which the rest of the world responds: Why not just start?
It doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be real.
4. Use phrases like "We’re still assessing our options."
Moving From Knowing to Doing
On a serious note, knowledge only becomes power when applied. Smart people often find themselves overwhelmed not by ignorance, but by abundance. The more they know, the harder it becomes to take the first step, because they are aware of all the ways things could go wrong.
But perfection is a trap. The smartest move isn’t reading another manual. It’s trying, failing, adjusting, and trying again. That’s real growth.
Action is the real curriculum.
You learn more by launching one real product than by attending ten strategy webinars. You grow more by managing one difficult conversation than by reading four books on communication. Knowledge without execution is a museum. Pretty, but sterile.
A Final Pep Talk
To all the overeducated, over-informed, and under-initiated: We see you. We salute your towering library and your impeccably curated course catalog. But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to close the book and open a spreadsheet.
The world needs fewer philosophers of productivity and more practitioners. Less planning, more prototyping. Fewer endless Zoom meetings about company values and more actual value.
You don’t need one more e-book. You need to act.
So yes, learning more is a smart person’s favorite way to procrastinate. But maybe the smarter ones will figure out it’s time to stop.
Now go. Ship the thing. Make the call. Launch the project.
And then read the book about it.
Concluded.
Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.
For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, any claim is lodged, it will be acknowledged and recognized duly.
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