As you know, habit creation and consistency are the foundation of every success out there. So, what exactly is the research habit?

Malcolm Gladwell said it best in his book: “Outliers” where it takes 10,000 hours to become a master in any skill.

If you read 1 hour per day, you’ll become an expert in that field for a few years.

This is why you want to develop the research habit. I call this the research habit because you’re spending a set amount of time each day reading, watching videos engaging with a skill.

For example, if I want to learn more about the real estate space, I want to get into this industry. I would spend 1 hour per day watching content about real estate, reading up magazines about real estate, talking to people that are in the industry.

The results for doing this for one day, may seem minimal, but over a period of time will compound and make you a subject matter expert.

For example, recently, for my niche – the tech industry. There’s so much to learn about, new technologies that come up. I discipline myself to every day watch a Google Talk video or a TEDx video on upcoming trends in tech.

This will help me identify business opportunities that I would otherwise miss if I don’t know anything.

A common misconception about the research habit is that you need to “TAKE ACTION”, and yes I do preach in my more practical guides that you need to take action when dealing with practical skills. But sometimes, just increasing your general knowledge is enough, because that’s enough to open the gates for good ideas to flow to you.

Increasing your general knowledge of anything will dictate the quality of action you’re able to take.

Here are some areas where you can start your research process at:

• Books
• YouTube content
• Blog posts
• Magazine articles
• Industry events

These 5 places are good enough to develop your research habit. Perhaps you’re thinking that there is just so much content out there, it’s impossible to learn everything about ANY subject matter. That’s the point. Learning is a continuous and never-ending process.

It’s best to set some goals in regards to this. As long as you watch 2-3 videos/day it constitutes as a success. You don’t want to eat the whole encyclopedia at once, because it’s not possible.

The research habit is important because you always want to stay in the cutting edge of your industry. At a baseline, learning the ins and outs of your industry but you want to also be understanding the developments, trends that’s going on.

The reason is that any business is not static, there’s no such thing as a static business, it’s always changing. The marketplace is always changing, and most importantly, people’s behaviors are always changing. A person that is interested in your product today can go to a competitor tomorrow, a person that’s with your competitor can change to do business with you today.

Or your whole industry could fall apart due to a single event – like for example COVID-19.

As business is a fluid environment, then this also means that research is always an ongoing thing. There are going to be many industry secrets for any industry out there, what I mean is that there are going to be niches inside niches that are so detailed, that only people that are very well versed in the industry will be able to know.

But knowing about these topics are crucial because they add to your general knowledge and your ability to make quality decisions. How do you learn about this topic? The research habit. I hope you learnt something from this article, and can take something to your business. Talk soon.

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