I hear some version of this frequently, and it never comes out sounding like an excuse.
"I'm too set in my ways." "That ship has sailed for me." "I am who I am at this point." Sometimes it's just the old line itself, tossed off with a laugh: you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
It sounds like a man who knows himself. It gets nods around the table. Nobody pushes back on it, because pushing back would feel rude, like you're telling somebody they haven't accepted reality yet.
In this week’s article, I want to push back on it anyway, because it isn't true, and because the real reason people stop learning has nothing to do with what they're capable of.
Your Brain Never Agreed to Stop Changing
Start with what's physically true, because the science here is settled and it isn't close.
Your brain rewires itself in response to demand. “Use it or lose it” is very true when it comes to how the brain works and wires itself. Learn something and use it, and the connections that support it get stronger and denser. Stop using something, and those connections thin out. This is called neuroplasticity, and it doesn't shut off when you turn 30 or 50 or 70. Adults build new neural pathways every day. Stroke patients relearn speech and movement by rerouting function to undamaged tissue. Adults pick up new languages, new instruments, new trades.(I learned to play guitar in my 30s.)
The capacity is there. It stays there. Whatever is stopping you from changing, it isn't your brain refusing to cooperate.
So the question isn't whether you can learn. It's why you don't.
A Researcher Answered This 60 Years Ago
There was a professor at the University of Michigan named Howard Yale McClusky who spent his career studying how adults actually learn. He wasn't a brain scientist, and he was working decades before anybody proved neuroplasticity was real. He was looking at something simpler and, I'd argue, more useful.
What he found is called the Theory of Power-Load Margin (or more simply just “Theory of Margin”), and once you see it you can't unsee it.
McClusky said every person is carrying a Load and holding a certain amount of Power. “Load” is everything demanding something from you: the business, the payroll, the mortgage, the aging parent, the kid struggling in school, the obligations you took on years ago and never revisited. “Power” is what you've got to meet it with: your energy, your health, your money, your skills, the people in your corner.
“Margin” is what's left over. The space between what's demanded of you and what you've got to give.
In his own words, when a person can lay hold of a reserve of Power, "he is better equipped to meet unforeseen emergencies, is better positioned to take risks, can engage in exploratory, creative activities, [and] is more likely to learn."
More likely to learn. He drew a straight line from margin to the ability to change more than 60 years ago.
Flip it around and you get the real diagnosis. When your Load equals or exceeds your Power, you have no margin. And with no margin, you don't learn anything new. Not because you can't. Because there's no room in the container.
Why Every Page Has a Margin
I've taught this for years using a piece of notebook paper, and I think you'll find the illustration helpful.
Every sheet of notebook paper has a margin line printed down the left side. This extra space is there on purpose, and you're not supposed to write in. It's there because as the page gets handled, edges tear. Somebody needs room to write a note. The margin exists so that when something unexpected happens to the page, the words survive it.
Books have done this for centuries, and the reasons go deeper than notebook paper. Open any book and look at the empty space framing the words. That space costs money. Paper, ink, printing, shipping, all of it goes up when you leave part of the page blank. So why has every book done it anyway?
Part of it is protection, and back when books were written on animal skin the threat was literal. Rats and mice ate at manuscripts. Monasteries kept cats in their libraries for exactly that reason, because vermin chewing the edges of a book somebody spent two years copying by hand was a real and constant danger. The margin was the buffer. When something came along and nibbled at the page, it took blank space instead of the words.
There's a second reason too. Scribes left wide margins so readers could write in them. Scholars filled those edges with notes, arguments, corrections, and questions. The blank space was there so the next person could think in it.
So margin does two jobs. It absorbs the damage, and it leaves room to respond.
Your life works the same way. Things eat at the edges, good things and bad things both, and if you've filled every square inch there's nothing to absorb the hit. No room for the opportunity that shows up on a Tuesday. No room for the skill that would change your next five years. No room for the crisis you didn't schedule.
Most entrepreneurs I know are living on a page with no margin, and then wondering why they can't seem to grow anymore.
What's Actually Eating Your Power
“Load” is the obvious villain, as McClusky pointed out, but it's rarely one big thing. It's accumulation.
There's a principle I teach called the Law of Open Cycles, and it explains this better than anything else I've found. Everything in life operates on start, change, and stop. An open cycle is anything you've started where the stop never came. The conversation you keep meaning to have. The hire you haven't made. The vendor contract you know is wrong. The system you half-built and abandoned. The apology you owe somebody.
Most of those things are not on your calendar, yet every one of them is drawing power. They sit in the back of your mind humming, taking up capacity, the way a computer slows to a crawl with forty windows open and never closed.
The Law of Open Cycles says the single greatest cause of stress isn't enduring hard situations. It's having too many open cycles at one time, which drops your “Power” right when your “Load” is climbing. That's how a capable person ends up feeling slow, reactive, and stuck. And a slow, reactive, stuck person doesn't learn new tricks. He just survives the day and does it again tomorrow.
The Golden Cage of “That's Just How I Am”
This is where the gold blinds you, and it's a convincing kind of gold.
Saying you're too set in your ways sounds like maturity. It sounds like a man who's made peace with himself, and it draws sympathy instead of scrutiny. Nobody challenges you on it. You get to keep your load, keep your habits, keep your schedule exactly as it is, and you get credit for being self-aware while you do it.
The cage is that the story protects the “load”. As long as the problem is your nature, you never have to look at your calendar. You never have to close a cycle, fire a client, delegate the thing you've been hoarding, or admit you built this crushing weight yourself, one yes at a time. That's the Law of the Architect in reverse. You designed the “load”, which means you're the only one who can redesign it.
The gold is the lie. You're not incapable of change. You're just too loaded down to attempt it, and calling that a personality trait is the most comfortable way to never fix it.
Getting Your Margin Back
Margin is a ratio, so you've got two levers. Cut the Load, or build the Power. Most people need both, but the Load side moves faster.
Start with an open cycles inventory. Sit down with a legal pad, and I'd suggest doing it with somebody who knows you well, because you'll miss things they'll see. Write down every unfinished thing pulling at you. Business, personal, relational, financial. Don't filter, don't rank, just get it all on paper. Most people are shocked at the length of the list. You've been carrying all of it without ever counting it.
Then split the list three ways:
- Cycles you can close today. Make the call, send the email, cancel the subscription, say the thing. Close them now.
- Cycles you can close with a little planning. Some of these take humility more than time. An apology you owe. A client conversation where you didn't deliver what you promised. Put a date on each one.
- Cycles that need real effort or outside help. These are the heavy ones, sometimes opened years ago. Forgiving somebody. Forgiving yourself. A debt you can't pay yet.
That third category is where most people give up. Don't. Give yourself permission to temporarily close those cycles. That means going to the person, being honest about where you are, and agreeing to reopen it when you're in a position to honor it. That isn't walking away. It's the difference between a problem that drains you every single day and a problem that waits.
Do this on a regular schedule, not once. “Load” rebuilds itself if you let it. When you start feeling slow, unresponsive, or overwhelmed, that feeling is your signal to pull out the legal pad again.
Words of Wisdom
"An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge." – Proverb 18:15
Notice the verb. The wise seek. That's an active posture, and it takes room to hold it. You can't seek anything while you're pinned under a load you never questioned. Clear the space first, and the seeking takes care of itself.
What to Do Next
Load creeps back in through your calendar. That's why the first thing I'd hand you is the same thing I handed you last week, because it matters.
The 10-Block Weekly Method is how I protect margin in an actual week. Five workdays, two blocks a day, ten blocks total, each with one purpose and hard edges. It keeps Load from quietly filling every hour you own. You can get the whole system, template included, at therealjasonduncan.com/10block.
And if you're looking at your “load” and realizing most of it traces back to a business that can't run without you, you're not the expert, you're the bottleneck. That's a bigger conversation and I'd like to have it. You can book a call with me directly at therealjasonduncan.com/talk.
– The Real Jason Duncan
– The Real Jason Duncan