Why Too Much Training Is Not Good

Surely there’s nothing like too much learning!  Learning never stops and we’ll never know everything. So isn’t it the case that the more we learn, the better? Won’t we be better experts in our fields the more courses, trainings, seminars we take? Then why is too much training not good for you?

Learning can be addictive

just like many other things. And yes, there are addicts to learning in this world. Those people sign up for every seminar, course, training that catches their attention. They’re propelled by the excitement of the promise that this course / seminar / training will make them better. But they don’t realise that while they’re course hopping they shift the focus from the path of their core expertise. And they’re constantly out of pocket while filling the pockets of the organizers of the courses. Professionals in many fields hold courses and seminars because courses and seminars are a good earner. One venue, equipment, team of hosts, and marketing mechanism to hold a course can pay for itself a million times at once. The higher the number of attendees, the higher the profit.

Too much training is not good for you

If you tend to generalise, I’m not saying that going to courses, seminars, and trainings is bad.  I am saying that going to too many is bad – for your pocket and focus.  Too many courses that teach different ways to kill the same bird will dilute your focus and pull you in too many directions.  Spreading yourself too thinly will make you a jack of all trades, but a master of none.  And while you’re sitting on all those courses and seminars you’re not helping your clients and learning valuable lessons in the process.

Another reason why too much training isn’t good for you is that the brain can only hold so much information.  If we don’t use it, we lose it.  As we constantly learn new approaches to the same thing, we inevitably lose the knowledge we have, because we can’t learn new and revise the old at once.  If we don’t revise the old, we don’t solidify it in the memory and it will disappear. So in the final analysis we’ll always only hold a certain amount in our brains no matter how much training we go through.

Get the training you need, but not too much

If you’re starting in any professional field, you may be at a quandary about what path to take. What to specialise in and focus on.  Full of enthusiasm you may feel lured by offers of courses, seminars, and trainings and be confused about what to take even before you get addicted to training… You will do yourself best service if you decide – and write down – what you want to focus on, specialise in, what skills you need to learn, and what skills you can put on the horizon of possibilities. Then pick training that will give you the skills essential for your specialisation. When you’ve done all the training and gained plenty of practical experience, you’ll be better informed about what else you need to learn and what you want to learn for additional inspiration.

And one more thing: since we can only one thing at a time, undertraining and overimplementing what we learnt is much better than overtraining and underimplementing which is so often the case! Would you like some advice or opinion?  Let’s talk about it.