SuccessQuest Podcast

Jacob and Kalob discuss how to become intellectually successful. The key is learning something new every day. 

Follow Up

• Follow up on commitments made in Episode 3
• Feedback on including a women’s perspective in Physical Success. 
• We appreciate feedback. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback at podcast@mysuccessquest.com or using the hashtag #askSQHQ on social media.

What is Intellectual Success?

• Continuous Learning.
• There’s a difference between conventional classroom learning and intrinsic continuous learning. You can spend your time learning things that matter to you. 
• Definition of knowledge: “facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.”
• Becoming intellectually successful will help you become successful in all of the other areas of success. They’re all tied together :).
• “Knowledge is power”
• “If knowledge is power, learning is a superpower” - Jim Kwick

Books

• Books are a great resource.
• Lifetimes of experience can be learned in a relatively short amount of time. 
• Free to Focus - Michael Hyatt
• Give and Take - Adam Grant
• Ben Carson Story
• Ben Carson Story - Video

Additional Resources for continual learning

• Online Courses
• Online Programs
• Live Events
• Podcasts
• Blogs
• Youtube

Jacob Links:

• Jacob’s Website
• Jacob’s LinkedIn
• Jacob's Twitter: @jacob_m_harmon

Kalob Links:

• Kalob’s LinkedIn

SuccessQuest Links:

• Website
• Blog
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter: @MySuccessQuest

Kalob: Hey there, and welcome back to the SQ HQ with another episode of SuccessQuest. I'm Kalob Valle.

Jacob: And I'm Jacob Harmon

Kalob: and on today's episode. We are going to dive into one of the six successes of Life intellectual success before we begin. We'd like to quickly recap some of the things we talked about last time.

Jacob: Perfect if you remember last time on. The SuccessQuest podcast we made a few commitments. I remember that I committed to run everyday for this week and Kalob committed to make one healthy choice. 

Kalob: Snap. Well, you know what actually didn't go too bad because I had I had to make a very easy Choice which was just not go to McDonald's my I was talking to my wife and I'm getting kind of excited about cooking a lot more so we went out and we got some ingredients and we make curry and I made a really cool like homemade spaghetti and I've been doing a lot more cooking at home because I'm a stay-at-home dad as well. But yeah, so I've been getting a lot more into cooking which I think is a healthier to option because I'm not gonna be adding as much salt and I'm not going out as much so. 

Jacob: That's great. Honestly for me, that's probably one of the biggest things when it comes to diet is I eat out way too much. So that's really great Kalob. I'll have to follow suit as for my challenge running everyday. I did not run every day, but. I ran a lot more than I usually do. I probably ran about five different days and I did so I wear an Apple Watch and part of the Apple watch is it has three rings that you have to fulfill and one of them is the move ring. Basically. It's how many calories you burn in a day and I filled my move ring every single day this week. So it's progress like we talked about last time progress is what's important. I didn't necessarily run every day, but. We're progressing we're doing better. So so that's good. 

Kalob: That's awesome. Well, we hope you guys also from listening our lap to our last podcast made some challenges of your own and we hope that you guys fulfilled those and if you guys did if you guys had any cool experiences, let us know let us know your progress on social media. We'd love to hear how you guys are doing.But we also wanted to bring up something that one of our listeners reached out to us. When we talked about physical success. We were talking a lot about you know, the stereotypical thought process of most people which is you want to have that body builder body. You want to have you want to be swole, you know, you need to go to the gym 7 times a week. But one thing we forgot to go over and this is this is another thing physical success is so broad like and all these successes are we could do hundreds of podcasts about probably each one of them and this is something we get excited for when we hear from a listener that we miss something or we should go over something next time and that was that well we Jacob and I were to men you know, so we really weren't thinking exactly about. The different views between physical success of men and women and we are listener was a woman and she she reached us what she said. She loved the podcast, but she also wished that we would have talked a little bit more about. How women view physical success and how that there are lots of Eating Disorders out there that a lot of women don't necessarily want to be swolled they just want to be skinny you know and that can also be incredibly unhealthy and that can be one of the stereotypes of physical success out there in society yeah that's something we definitely would like to address in the future podcast I think I think that'd be fantastic 

Jacob: and we want to thank this listener. We aren't going to cover everything on every podcast. We're human. We're going to forget things or we're just going to completely glazed over something that we didn't even think about. So we're relying on you guys to help us. We want to hear from you. We want to hear your feedback. We want to hear things that we might have missed in an episode.

So if you want to reach out to us, there's a lot of different ways you can get ahold of us. You can send us an email. Our email is podcast at www.MySuccessQuest.com. You can reach out to us on social media by using the hashtag #askSQHQ for SuccessQuest Headquarters. And we will see anything that has that hashtag on it.

You can also just send us a message on Facebook or Instagram or any of our social media platforms. So we want to hear from you and we welcome any feedback that you have. 

Kalob: Yeah, and you know, that just makes it easier for us. Now we get more content and then we're this is how we're learning together when you guys give us feedback and we can go and get some more really juicy research done on some of these topics and we can. Continue to progress in our knowledge of these different types of successes. Let's go ahead and dive straight in to what is intellectual success. We Define intellectual success as continuous learning very basically put and so that's kind of the basis of this whole thing. We're going to be talking about. Continual learning continual gaining of knowledge throughout your life. 

Jacob: It makes me think back to when I was in school. I went to high school. I went to college. I got my bachelor's degree and I was one of those people that loved school. I know that that's not the case for most people know or a lot of people but I actually really enjoyed school. I enjoy learning but there also is a lot of times where I felt like I was being obligated to learn and I was. It wasn't necessarily authentic because I was being forced to read a certain book or I was being forced to write a paper on a certain topic. And for me learning is something that is a lot more enjoyable when it's something that I'm doing for myself. I'm doing because I'm intrinsically motivated to do it and we we're not necessarily saying that schools are bad, right? It's a great thing to go and get a college degree. Oh, yeah, but we are saying that there is. A difference between just going and getting a degree and actually just learning the rest of your life a little bit everyday.

Kalob: I like how he goes straight into the differences between conventional learning and continual learning because school is awesome. Like everyone should go to school. Everyone should go to college. Not necessarily because that's how you're going to become rich in life and how you're going to make your wealth. But because there are lots of basic things that everyone needs to know like everyone. I remember when I was in high school to everyone's like, oh man. My topic is a math. I hate math and I'm like we'd always be asking like, how are we going to use this in our day-to-day life and sometimes randomly, especially when I'm cooking. I actually I actually use math that I never thought I'd use before but um, it's important that we go to school. There's basic things that we can learn in our education system. Today that are that will be of benefit to us, but afterwards that's what we're talking about really and like when you get back home from school or college and you're done with homework, or maybe you've graduated. What do you do? Like, do you stop learning? No, like we want to talk about how it's important that every day. You're utilizing resources that are everywhere that are literally surrounding you at every corner. There are so many ways to continue to learn and you're probably doing this already listening to the news watching television. These may not be the best resources for continual learning, but there are they are something and we want to talk to you today about how it is. You can can you can be on that path to constantly adding knowledge to your database every day, but I also wanted to kind of read this. I thought this was really interesting because learning is just gaining knowledge, right and I want it to look up the definition of knowledge and on Google it says knowledge is facts information and skills acquired by a person through experience or education. So I thought this was really cool because skills. Expanding your skill sets is an additional part of knowledge. It's not just reading a bunch of books every day, which is important reading books is good, but it's also about expanding skill set. So I mean there's a lot of things to talk about here under intellectual success.

Jacob: Something that's really cool about intellectual success and knowledge is it does tie into every single other area of success, for example,  Skills are worth something. If you have a skill you can actually monetize that skill and become more financially successful one of the big things that I've done throughout my life. I was able to get through college debt-free because I owned a web design company. I knew how to build a website that is a skill that is a knowledge that something that I gained over the course of time and because I knew that and someone else didn't I could offer that to them? In exchange for money, so that's not necessarily the reason to become intellectually successful, but. What we're saying is that if you become intellectually successful if you learn skills and you learn knowledge, then those things will affect the rest of your life. They will help you become successful in all of the other areas and there's something it's a quote that everyone is heard before and I don't even know who said it originally but everyone knows the phrase knowledge is power right if you know something. That's powerful. That's that's impactful and something that we found as we were researching. This topic is if knowledge is power learning is a superpower. That's actually something that is on Jim Kwick's website. He is a professional Warrior and he teaches people how to learn but I love that if knowledge is power learning is a superpower. Because the way you acquire knowledge is by learning. 

Kalob: So let me ask you guys all the listeners out there today. How are you learning every day? Because we really should be learning every day. I love that quote too because if knowledge is power learning is a superpower. Are you utilizing that superpower as often as you can? And how and what ways are you doing that? What resources are you using? To be able to expand your skill sets to expand your knowledge and we want to talk to you guys about other resources that maybe you haven't thought of or maybe you currently aren't utilizing that you probably should be. Let me dive into just the topic of Books Okay, because we're talking about that a little bit earlier. This is a very simple method and it's existed for thousands of years. It's kind of crazy thinking about that books of never really changed over time, you know books have existed since the dawn of humanity and we need books because that's how we pass on knowledge and. II can't tell you how many times I've heard from incredibly famous people and I've been to a lot of seminars. I've been to a lot of conventions and I've heard incredibly famous rich people tell me online or live in front of me that to become successful. It's important that you're reading a book a day.  And I think I talked about this one of our previous podcasts because I've heard this quote so many times that it's really impacted me but reading a book a day. I thought that was incredible. Obviously, there's some books you can't just read in a day, right? You want to take time to learn you want to take time to read and maybe enjoy but like reading a book a day could have a huge effect on you. We should be taking advantage of reading books every day because there are four. First of all, there are hundreds of thousands of books out there in the world that have incredible amounts of knowledge in them that are invaluable honestly, like paying 20 bucks for a book that could change your life. Is nothing in comparison to the grand scheme of things but people have spent their lives and dedicated their lives to writing and sharing the information that they've gathered throughout their own personal lives and you don't have to spend your life figuring it out. I've heard this actually from a couple of close friends who I see as. Kind of like superheroes for me, you know because they take advantage of this every day, but they tell me like Why do why are you trying to figure it out? Because someone else already figured it out for you. You just need to take the time to go and learn what they've shared with the world and that's what books can be for. You books can be a pathway into someone else's. Life experiences and where they've already had to suffer through the time to figure it out and now they're just going to share it with you. I think that's incredible. So books are awesome. And you know what Jacob and I are actually reading a couple books right now to and you can see this on our website man. It's so important that we're reading Jacob. Do you want to talk about your book at all that you're reading? 

Jacob: So the book I'm reading right now is called free to focus. And it's by Michael Hyatt who is a CEO and productivity expert. I'm still in the beginning stages of this book free to focus. But basically the idea of the book is that we can structure our time and we can prioritize our tasks so that we can get the most important things done. He talks about the importance of delegating. And the importance of giving tasks that don't matter to other people. For example, like I said, he's a CEO and he spends a lot of time in the book saying if it's something that's not important or it's something that my skills aren't required to do then why not let someone else do it? So a lot of the book is just focusing on the things that are important and the things that actually matter. 

Kalob: Now question Jacob. How big is that book how. Have you finished you haven't finished that book have you. 

Jacob: No, I haven't and honestly, I don't even know how many pages it is because I'm hating it an electronic version. Okay, that's probably the easiest way to do things. So but it's pretty long. I mean, it's got three major sections and then a bunch of smaller chapters inside of those. Like I said, I haven't finished it and I've been reading it for a few weeks. I'm definitely not doing the book a day thing. But I also am not giving as much time to reading as ice. Yeah, 

Kalob: and you know what? It's funny because I hear that quote read a book a day. And I think it's a great goal. But at the same time.  The reality is no one has all the time in the world. I think for us instead of reading an entire book a day. It is just picking up a book and reading every day because reading is so essential the book I'm reading right now is called give and take by Adam Grant and I love this book right now. And actually I've been trying really hard to keep up with reading as much as I can every day and to the point. I'm reading maybe two. Max three books a month, which I think is pretty good. But my these books aren't really big either like hundred hundred twenty Pages really easy reads and they have just incredible information and advice that you can apply to your everyday life give and take is about the idea that you know, we live in a world where people. Assume that it's a dog-eat-dog world. If you're not thinking about you and yourself first and how everyone can like everything you do can benefit you. Then you're living wrong. It's trying to change the mentality that you don't have to be a taker. You don't have to seek to take advantage of other people. You've probably seen those people who you work with who are constantly. Sucking up to their bosses or they want the next promotion and you can see you can see the tension between some co-workers because they're competing against each other. A lot of people have a taker mentality and the book is about the benefits of being a giver which is not looking to take advantage of people but looking to add value to as many people as you can looking to provide something of yourself to them. Without the expectation of receiving anything back. It's a really amazing read. I'm actually almost done with the book and the next book I want to start is five love languages because it's about relationships and I actually have read that book before but I want to read it again because that book is amazing anyway, but for you listeners out there. If you're not reading a book right now and you're looking for a great book that you could start reading check out our website, you can see exactly which books were reading and we have reading list that we're going to continually make a bigger reading list. So you have just instant access to some of the great books that we're reading and you can trust I mean these are these are great book.

Jacob: Just to really hit home the point of how important reading is. I'd like to tell a quick story many of you have probably heard of Ben Carson who is a famous neurosurgeon and he actually ran for president a few years ago. He didn't get super far in the race. But his story is pretty inspiring. His mother was cleaning houses for a bunch of rich people. And something that she noticed is that every house she went to there was a large library of books. They had huge shelves full of books and she came home and she saw her two sons watching TV. They didn't have a book in the house and they were very poor. Her son's weren't doing well in school. They were really struggling and so every day day in and day out. She would go to these rich people's homes. And see the books and then she come home and see the TV and she started to notice. Wait a minute. There might be a correlation here. So she told her sons. Hey every, single week. You are going to read two books and write to book reports and you're going to bring them to me. She sent them to the library and they had to check out two books a week and give her book report. She limited their TV time and guess what happened? Both of her sons have become incredibly successful in life. Like I said earlier Ben Carson is a world-renowned neurosurgeon. They're both incredibly successful. Why because they read books because they are learning Kalob mentioned before the fact that you can get 30 years worth of experience. In a few weeks time reading a book because someone is taken all of that time and pain and suffering to learn these things can just give it right to you. So reading is incredibly important.

Kalob: I love that. Oh man reading really is so cool. And it's so easy because there's no you don't have to finish a chapter every day. It really is you can do it on your own time your own speed. It's fantastic and you can learn a lot other than just the concepts in the values. I mean you're learning new. Words, I learn new words all the time diving into different types of resources other than books. We have online courses online programs Live Events podcasts blogs. I mean, there are so many different types of resources that you can be taking advantage of to constantly learn and it's amazing what the internet does for people today. Like there's we have so much access to the world at the tip of our fingertips. Are we utilizing that or are we just scrolling through Instagram or Twitter all day, you know, and we could be reading genuinely. Articles or listening to some incredibly inspiring podcasts. I mean this world is filled with people who specialize themselves and motivating and inspiring and and of course you guys have us.

Jacob: I completely agree and one of the amazing things about this day and age is you can literally go and search and find a YouTube video, right? Um, every time that I have something that I don't know how to do I can find an instant tutorial on exactly how to do it even in something as simple as fixing a piece of my car. I am not a mechanic all of my my family will attest to that. I have a brother that's really really good with cars. I'm not but guess. I had an issue with my car. I searched the internet and in about 10 minutes. I had a YouTube video with a mechanic who actually knew how to do it showing me exactly what I needed to do. I may not be smart when it comes to cars but there are other people out there who are and who are willing to share that information usually free. We live in an amazing world. So I guess what we're trying to get to. Similar to our discussion about physical success last week. We want to invite you to do one thing to change one thing in your life, maybe add 10 minutes of reading at the end of your day or make a goal to learn one new thing every day and write it in a journal, right? There's a lot of different ways you can do this and honestly, we'll leave that up to you. But we want to invite you to make one change in your life that will. Allow you to learn a new skill or a new Factory. 

Kalob: And then we want to challenge you on top of that to reach out to us and let us know exactly what it is. You're doing to increase your intellectual success and this is just like Jacob was saying before this is such an important foundation to the rest of all the other successes out there because the more you learn the more you're going to be able to accomplish all those other. Facets of success. I mean this really does connect itself to it's like a web. They're all connected and intellectual success is one of the one of the foundations of that. 

Jacob: Well, thank you so much for spending the last 20 minutes of your life with Kalob and I we really appreciate it and if you learn something new today or receive some motivation or inspiration to change something in your life. That's what matters and we're so happy that you're listening to these podcasts with us. It's been it's been a fun Journey. We really enjoying doing this. So please subscribe to the podcast. Give us a good rating and share it with your friends go up to someone that you feel could use this information. Ask them to take out their phone find the podcast and download it for them. Honestly. That's the best thing you can do to support us right now. We're really trying to get as many followers of this. podcast as we can, so go ahead and share it with your friends and have a successful day. Whoo.

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