Are you sensing an expectation that you must always be growing, learning new things, always upgrading yourself otherwise your time is wasted? If you find joy and fulfillment by exploring continual outlets to improve, develop and grow that is wonderful. Maybe in the future this article will resonate with you but perhaps now is not the time for it. For those of us who seek to become a more complete person yet struggle to keep at it constantly, you would be the person I am trying to reach.
Striving to be better can be great, however please don't let perfection be the enemy of progression and certainly don't let others expectations push you down a path you are not ready to walk.
I have attempted many different self improvement paths some personal others related to work. It may have been for example learning how to breath better, run further or learning how to help executors through their role in an estate. Regardless of the then current improvement I was attempting to embark upon it was rarely a continuous straight line of progression to a pre-conceived end point. For me my education since the age of 18 has been largely self study. Often it came with a fixed time limit to complete say 1 or 2 years, but beyond that you decided when and how to learn the materials needed to take the final exams. If I found the topic fascinating I would often spend all my extra time devoted to the subject, but if it was less interesting than anticipated or the materials not conducive to learning I would take as long as allowed to get through it, the learning became a chore instead of a joy.
Similarly with unstructured learning such as you might obtain from watching a documentary or reading a book, I would typically get absorbed in the subject for months at a time and become quite focused on it then put it aside. Eventually I reached an end point with that topic. I learned for instance how and why to eat a whole foods diet and no longer needed to pursue it other than as a passing interest. Or I just stopped caring about the subject and decided it was no longer worth the time or resources to reach an end point.
I find it intriguing that it is deemed acceptable (by most) for someone to buy a book and never finish it. However to enroll in a learning program and not complete it is very much frowned upon. I suspect the primary reason is the cost difference. A book may be $20 and you may spend a few hours trying to read it. A learning program might be $2,000 (or much much more) and take several months or years to complete. It could also be the perceived opportunity cost you are losing out on, for example if you finish your schooling in XYZ subject you could be earning $100,000 a year versus only $50,000 if you do not complete it.
If someone else be it a relative or your employer has paid for the tuition for higher learning or qualification program and you accepted that, there is certainly an argument to either see it through or pay it back. Like it or not you are using their resources and you have to honor that.
If you are solely responsible for the resources used, you are accountable to yourself. You may have others relying on you completing something and this will have to be factored into what you do next but the choice is entirely yours at this point.
Should or should you not finish a book you started? You never know where it where it might lead you but if your not absorbing the information because it is not interesting then you will likely forget much of it by the time you end. It may be an indication that this topic is not one to spend any more resources on at this stage. Maybe you were going to enroll in your dream course and figured you would start with an introduction to the subject with a book. But its not engaging you. Perhaps the book is not well written or the style of writing is not conducive to your learning style, only you can attempt to gauge that. You might try a second book on the subject by a different author / teacher and see if you still feel the same. Or maybe you put it away for now, you do not embark on the dream course and revisit the situation sometime in the future. The main question at that point might be "What if?" What if I did force myself to finish it, what if I just sign up for the course and commit to it and the larger costs involved? An important question. One to wrestle with for sure.
I went through this exact situation when I became intrigued with the whole foods plant based eating pattern. I had watched some documentaries that led me to some books and podcasts, I switched over to that way of eating and became convinced of its benefits for me. Over the course of about two years I began to wander how I could maybe help others with what I knew. But I didn't think they would listen to me. I'm not a medical professional of any kind so it started to occur to me that perhaps I could take some courses to show I had a level of official knowledge in this arena and then maybe I could be useful to others. I settled on a program that required a significant financial and time commitment to embark on as the best way for me to reach that objective. What may make the situation different to yours is that I was not looking to actually earn a living providing health advice.
After looking through the options available to me I settled on a two year course. At the end of the first year assuming you passed the exams you would be a qualified Holistic Nutrition and Health Coach. If you completed year two you would qualify as a Holistic Nutritionist with advanced knowledge of anatomy & physiology of the human body, nutritional pathology & symptomatology and the fascinating world of mind/body nutrition. It all sounded very interesting to me and exactly what I thought I was looking for. Well I did for the most part enjoy the first year of the program, certainly there were some areas that were less interesting but overall a worthwhile endeavor. I passed the exams and got my qualification in a completely new subject matter than I had been developing in my career. I quickly dived into the second year and this was when the wheels of enthusiasm started to come off. Not only was the subject material much more intense and in depth than the first year (not unreasonably) the actual knowledge was far outside the bounds of what I wanted to pursue. It was preparing me to work in a medical setting and understand what other medical professionals would be dealing with and how to work alongside them to provide effective patient care. This would have given me that level of technical depth. I quickly realised this was far beyond what I needed to accomplish my goal. Because I had paid for the course and was not getting a refund if I quit I slogged on.
Some may say "You may as well finish, no qualification is a bad qualification. Just see it through" To some extent they are not wrong. Unfortunately I was beginning to resent the course, it was taking a lot of time to read the materials, sit the various tests and exams, prepare research papers and the like. I got about half way through the second year and made the decision to pull the plug. It simply was not for me. I will admit I did second guess my choice for a few weeks afterwards, but in looking back I have no regrets. Sure I "lost" some money. But in truth I gained a new skill set with the completion of the first year and I learned a little more about myself in attempting the second year. So in my estimation I did not lose anything, I had a net gain.
I was practicing the art of Failing Forward. If we all knew the exact path to take through life it would certainly make things a bit easier. Yet I imagine it would make life far less interesting. Part of the joy of learning and developing is whenever possible to explore where your interests are at any given moment. Failing Forward means that you will almost certainly "fail" at much of what you attempt for one reason or another. The outcomes of any given task, project, learning path is never known until you start and maybe reach the end point. Even if you do reach the end point there is never a certain outcome. Maybe despite your best effort you simply can not complete the task, the project fails to deliver on the stated goal or you do not finish or are unable to pass the exams for a qualification. You may think of yourself as having failed. I do not want to encourage you to believe you didn't fail, you most certainly did. Yet we often equate failure to reach the intended outcome as a waste of time and effort. I would ask you to reframe that as Failing Forward. You almost certainly learned something along the way that you can apply to the future. Life is generally a series of incremental steps which may see us racing forward sometimes but no doubt also retracing our steps when things did not go as planned. You grow a bit more, you learn a bit more, you experience all sorts of emotions and must deal with the expectations of others. If you do not give up however on the bigger, grander scale of what your life can be, then you will walk forward when all is said and done. How far and for how long is anyone's guess, but to a large degree you do get to influence that journey in all sorts of ways.
So I encourage you to Fail Forward. Try all sorts, learn all sorts, lean into the fear of it (if you have some). But only when you are ready too. Its ok to simply live life for a time and be content with where you may be. Continual growth is not everything, it may put you in a situation where you steal from yourself the opportunity to explore and enjoy the progress you have made to date.
All the best on your journey.
David.