Sponge Bob Forever

#UsBlogs week 5 theme: “What Are You Afraid Of?” (and what are you doing about it)”

 

The world is changing, our lives are changing, business is changing – it seems like never in the history of humanity has change been so abound and so fast. Darwin made us understand the evolution of the species and changes in genetics, and history has taught us about how caveman found fire, and the creation of the internal combustion engine, but the rate of change (check out this interview on ‘Understanding the Accelerating Rate of Change‘) brought about by the evolving digital landscape, by the connections and the access to information that we have today, has never been seen before.

So when you ask me what I’m afraid of, I pause for thought – there are many things that make me worry, that keep me awake at night, but what makes me really afraid is what I don’t know I don’t know. Knowledge falls into three categories: what you know, what you don’t know and what you don’t know you don’t know, and it is the third of these that is most concerning in an environment that is in constant change.

So I’m afraid of stopping learning, of slowing down the rate at which I can stay curious; and I push myself to keep reading, engaging and trying to understand the world around me as it evolves. I don’t have a tried and true method, there isn’t a science to learning every day, it is a state of mind – a mind that asks questions and makes mental notes, that can spend an hour reading a thousand Twitter entries or a single academic paper on the evolution of data in our society.

I’m afraid of being left behind, of being left out, and the only solution, is to be a constant learner, a constant sponge, always curious and always absorbing – SpongeBob SquarePants had it right (if only I could figure out what the SquarePants are for now).

 

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WEEK 5 ROUNDUP – WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? (AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT)

 

By Lex Bradshaw-Zanger

A digital native and integrated brand marketer with a passion for marketing-communications and product design, Lex has a truly international outlook and experience, having worked both in major marketing agencies and client-side brands across Europe, the US and the Middle East.

4 comments

  1. I love this take on fear and what to do about it. Being a sponge is definitely a state of mind ~asking questions, making mental notes. The next question then has to be, how do you act differently as a result of all the ideas, insights and knowledge you consume? How do you wring out the sponge to create ‘suds’ (to really stretch the metaphor)!

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