Blueprint >> Theory vs Practice Ratio

Disclaimer: This document is in raw form as I process and distill 4 years-worth of my personal development notes. Expect some typos and cryptic language for now. I will be updating frequently and polishing up.

Prescription: Watch your theory vs. practice ratio.
Related Concepts: Just Do It

What is Theory vs Practice Ratio?

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Why is it Important?

Your growth and results will stall if the ratio between your theory and practice gets out of balance.

Theory vs Practice Ratio Videos

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Theory vs Practice Ratio: Key Points

How much theory are you taking in relative to your implementation? How much are you studying and planning versus acting? You need to strike the right balance if you want good results.

Study (easiest) >> Planning >> Implementation(hardest)

It takes far less emotional labor to sit back and theorize versus going out into the real world and making it happen. The real world will thwart you and present unexpected obstacles. It will take physical and mental energy to bust through the blocks and persevere. This is much less the case when you are studying material or laying out plans in your head. It's much easy to lay out a plan for a $100 million dollar company than it is to actually implement it.

Both theory and practice are important, but you need have the proper mix. The ideal ratio will be something close to 10:90 — 10% study and planning and 90% implementation. This ratio will vary based on what you're doing, but not as much as you'd think. Implementation should be much larger than theory.

To understand and integrate theory, you must implement it. Implementation generally requires much more time than study. If you're taking in too much theory, you will be frustrated with lack of results. You will process far more theory than you can retain — which is a big waste of time.

Your mind, in its attempt to create resistance, will tempt you to study more and more material. Be careful. Recognize this an excuse to delay action. You generally have to force yourself to implement or you will get caught up in mental-masturbation.

Put much more value, in your mind, on implementation. If reading a book is important to you, then putting what you've read into practice should be x10 more important to you.

Examples of theory:

• Reading
• Seminars
• Video/audio training
• Discussion
• Meetings
• Planning and documenting
• Visualization and affirmations
• Study
• School work
• Prep-work

Sometimes you can run into the opposite problem where you are implementing mindlessly without an effective plan or framework. This can happen if you completely neglect study and prep-work. In this case you will fail to get results because you are doing the same things over and over again. But this tends to be a rare problem.

References