Intellectual Wellness
What have you learned today? This was a question I asked my children every day when they got home from school growing up. It was a way to check in, as well as force them to distill the knowledge of the classroom into retainable pieces. It is also a question I believe leaders should be asking themselves daily.
Data and information are exploding. According to one article in 1900, human knowledge doubled approximately every 100 years. In 1945 this had been cut in half, doubling less than every 50 years. Today, information doubles every 13 months, with it quickly moving to doubling every 12 hours. Every minute there are 500 additional hours of content uploaded to the internet (Statista), or 720,000 hours of information every day.
The remarkable speed at which information is being produced makes it imperative that we learn to learn. To learn requires reflection.
The first smartphone, the iPhone, on which you are possibly reading this blog, was first released a mere 16 years ago last month. Consider how much learning is now in the palm of your hand to which your parents and grandparents did not have access. What will the next 16 years bring?
New information is coming at us faster than ever and discerning what knowledge to retain and act upon is paramount to a successful future for your company, yourself, or your employee.
Intellectual wellness is about sifting through the deluge of data to make sense of what would make the world a better place. Intellectual wellness is reviewing what you are learning—taking time to stop, breathe deeply, discern, and decide on the next step. Intellectual wellness means slowing down so you can move forward effectively, before being buried in the new ideas that will present themselves tomorrow.
“After work, ask yourself, what did I learn today? How will this help me tomorrow? ”
