How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?
Seth Godin
The Double-Edged Digital Renaissance
The information age is truly incredible.
There has never been a time in human history that people have had such fast, easy, and affordable access to information and education.
Internet technology is the most profound thing to happen to human progress since the printing press made literacy the standard.
Are we taking full advantage of it?
Here’s the thing about our ease of access to information:
- Anything that’s easy to do is also easy not to do.
- It’s easy to dismiss something like a free language learning app because it doesn’t cost us much time, money, or effort to use it. We don’t feel like we’re losing anything by ignoring that tool.
- Sure, learning a new language can open new career options, increase your value in your job and your community, and even improve your brain function.
But here’s a fact about human nature:
- People are more motivated by the possibility of loss than they are by the potential for gain.
In more practical terms:
- A person is likely to take action to keep $5 they already have, but they’re not as likely to take action to gain $50 that they don’t have yet.
- By lowering the amount of investment involved in accessing information, we’ve made it more accessible, but for a lot of people, it’s also less likely that they’ll use it.
Are You Stagnating?
Think about it, when was the last time you used technology to learn something worthwhile?
If you’re like most people, you probably use the web primarily for entertainment.
There are more and greater opportunities now than ever before, and some people are taking advantage of the plentiful market resources to do incredible things.
The only thing you need is a willingness to value the things you don’t have yet, and the discipline to keep learning, growing, and doing.
Focus Areas for Health
In light of recent global events, we have all found ourselves with a little more free time than we would like. While out of our normal routines, it’s probably wise to focus on our health.
Here’s a good list of five focus areas for health:
- Physical Health – Body functions – The energy you need to carry out everyday tasks
- Mental Health – How you react to events – Feelings respond appropriately
- Emotional Health – Being comfortable with yourself, with others, and your environment
- Social Health – How you get along with others
- Spiritual Health – Your individual purpose expressed by values, morals, and ethics
Technology for Physical Health
This is probably the easiest one that most people already have figured out. There are tons of fitness apps out there from tracking your runs (like GoMe which we built!) to tracking your food. There’s a lot of value in using these reporting tools to help keep tabs on your physical health.
Technology for Mental Health
For mental health the quest for a good app can be a little more challenging, although one of my favorites is built right into my watch. The breathe app gives me a good reminder to stop and take one minute to focus on my breathing. Always seems to help, even just a little.
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