Worrying

Before Sat Nav’s we could find our way from anywhere to anywhere by using our brains, our intelligence and only occasionally with the aid of an old school paper map. I don’t know about you but with navigation being standard fitment in every car and on every phone, I use it all the time. Could I navigate manually now? Probably not.

For all of us technology is capable of saving us time and effort in almost all areas of our lives and the ubiquitous availability of AI- on every application and search engine raises a difficult question for all of us. To what degree are we allowing ourselves to become dependent on technology?

A few weeks ago I was helping a colleague do some crucial work on defining her Core Client and her Value Proposition, which is vital for any business, and she announced that she could just ask ChatGPT. I just looked at her and replied, ‘Or you could think it through for yourself’.

The fact is that we learn more from looking for the answer even if we don’t find it than by getting the answer itself. As Einstein once said “The significant challenges we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”. If we don’t do the hard work of thinking our level will never raise.

I worry that the relentless reliance upon technology will cause our thinking to atrophy just as my map reading skills have done.

So the questions for this week are;

• To what extent are you cultivating your critical thinking muscle? What are you doing specifically?
• On a scale of 0 to 10 how often do you blindly rely on technology to give you the answer to something you could have worked out for yourself? For instance to find out what the weather is do you pick up your phone or look out of the window?
• How often do you sidestep the hard work of thinking for yourself?