I used to be the person with the colour-coded highlighters and a front-row seat. Early in my career, my appetite for workshops, seminars, and formal training was bottomless. I’d walk in with a fresh notebook and a genuine fear that if I missed a single session, I’d fall behind.
Looking back, I remember that version of myself fondly but I don’t quite recognise him anymore.
Now that I’ve hit 40, I’ve noticed a quiet shift: that old hunger for structured, classroom-style learning has faded. For a while, I felt a twinge of guilt about it. Was I stagnating? Was I becoming closed-minded?
I’ve realised the answer is actually the opposite. It’s not about doing less; it’s about needing something deeper.
In our 20s and early 30s, we are in the Accumulation Phase. Everything is new, so every framework or “101” session feels like a revelation. We collect credentials and just-in-case knowledge because we’re still building our foundation.
But after 15 or 20 years in the trenches, the math changes. You enter the Execution Phase.
If you’ve been paying attention to your work all these years, you’ve likely developed an intuitive operating system that handles 90% of what the day throws at you. The gap between what you already know and what a general workshop offers has naturally narrowed.
When you’re a beginner, the threshold for intellectual excitement is low because the world is wide open. But as your knowledge deepens, you need more specialised, nuanced, or advanced inputs to feel that same spark of discovery.
It isn’t arrogance to sit in a room and realise you’ve already mastered the material being presented, it’s just an honest assessment of your journey. It’s the moment you realise you’ve moved from being the student of the how to a practitioner of the why.
Today, my learning looks different. It’s faster and more surgical.
- The Old Way: Spend eight hours in a conference room hoping for one nugget of wisdom.
- The New Way: Identify a specific problem, watch a focused 10-minute deep dive, call a trusted colleague, solve it, and move on.
This isn’t laziness; it’s efficiency. At 40, my social battery for the performance of professional networking, the ice-breakers and the forced breakout sessions, is more finite. I crave depth over breadth. I want authentic conversations with peers who challenge me, not rehearsed elevator pitches.
If you find yourself politely declining the next workshop invite without a shred of guilt, go easy on yourself. You haven’t stopped growing; you’ve just graduated to a different kind of classroom:
- Learning by doing (and failing).
- Learning by mentoring (teaching is the ultimate mastery).
- Learning by reflecting (finding the wisdom in your own experiences).
Your brain isn’t resisting growth; it’s protecting its energy for the things that actually move the needle. You haven’t stopped learning; you’ve just stopped settling for the shallow end of the pool. And honestly? The water is much better out here.