Intellectual abilities far outweigh your technical competence, educational qualifications, experience or general knowledge/information. If someone stands out of the crowd, it ought to do something with his/her intellectual abilities. Ability to analyze, rationalize, empathize, reason-out, lead, innovate, create, anticipate and foresight comes from your intellect!
Intellectual abilities have more to do with your EQ (emotional quotient) as compared to IQ. Everyone has these abilities; but the degree varies. Those with higher degree of intellect are tremendously successful in their career and personal life, enjoy terrific happiness and sense of accomplishments!
Intellectual abilities can be defined as your abilities to comprehend, contemplate and conclude using your consciousness and wisdom! These are all about mind and its response to a given situation!! This sounds like a simple statement; but it plays the most significant part in making you!!!
Let us discuss what the biggest threat is that can impair these abilities and what opportunities are there to improve the same.
Risks that we run in current era!
This is an era of information explosion. Colossal amount of information is being captured, collated, classified and presented every second. To access this information, internet and smart phones, apart from TV, Tablets and PCs/Laptops, have become integral part of nearly everyone’s life.
Research results and surveys show staggering use of on-line media. As per GlobalWebIndex, people across the world now spend an average of 10.7 hrs. daily on all forms of media, out of which 5.6 hrs. are spent on digital media! Weighted world average, as per survey conducted in Jan. 2014, for daily time spent on social media alone is 2.0 hrs., with Argentinians spending highest time of 4.3 hrs. and least time being spent by Japanese at 0.8 hr. Average American spends 2.3 hrs. per day, whereas Indians spend 2.4 hrs. on social media. Most of such time spent is for non-work related information exchange.
If you are an active user of social media, you would only know how much time you are tempted to spend on clicking likes, conveying greetings for birthdays, festivals, job or profile changes of your friends or followers! Most of times, people do it under compulsion or casually; but seldom consciously or purposefully!
Where does this relentless search and storage of information (in physical or mental files) lead to?
- Majority of times, surfing and search for information by most is random and hence, its end use is also random.
- When you don’t have a purpose of an activity, you would not know or bother about prudential limits of the same. This is when, you would stray into what is not sober and tend to get hooked to inadvertent or indecent information.
- Without a clear purpose, you can never focus on quality and hence you fall prey to quantity!
So, you would engage yourself reading and collecting lot of information. This can only clutter and confuse your mind and kill your focus! It would be interesting to know that more than 80% of information that you read from print or soft media is irrelevant to you. So, imagine the time you spend first to read and then to mull over or discuss such information!
It is good to remember that “good has limits; but bad has none”. Immaterial information is actually an ill! - Irrelevant information makes you inefficient and incoherent!
- If you believe that what you do for fun, leisure or entertainment, including reading or viewing information, does not impact your character or class, think over again!
What you do for fun actually has firm impact on your persona. So, be frugal with information flow or exchange!! - Loads of information would lower your drive, patience, peace of mind and sound sleep.
- If one or more clicks can get you every information, multiple answers to every question you have, that too duly analyzed, then what is left for your brain to work on? How would you strengthen your analytical and computing abilities?
2 things are sure to happen – (a) what comes easily also goes away easily. So you would have problem to retain such information in your mind (b) for lack of exercise, your brain would lose its power, like your muscles do in absence of good use!
From above, it is very clear that easy, enormous and erratic information can severely impair your intellectual abilities.
How to convert risks into rewards!
You are blessed with superbly advanced information technology; do everything possible that it does not become a bane for you. Here is what you can do:
- Lower your engagement for the information, which is not relevant to you or to which you are inert or you react. Put more emphasis of such information from various media that makes you alert and active.
- Most efficient use of information that you gather is to align it with your short and long term goals.
- Practice to evaluate or investigate the information you possess as to what are contradictions, lack of clarity, presence of paradoxes and gray or unexplored areas in the same.
Result of such evaluation would be your real opportunities to work on! - Decipher from the information you have, up to what level the work has already been done. Going beyond that level, work and innovate would bring you experience and excellence, you would ever treasure and endear!
- Neven keep information or knowledge you possess as dormant. Roll it in following cycle:
Information –> Investigate –> Innovate/ new ideas –> Inspiration –> Increasing intellectual abilities/Implementation/Strengthening your beliefs
So, why not take full advantage of IT enabled age to become fully Intellectually enabled?
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