One of my students joined a study call and told us he had an addiction, though not the kind you’d expect from a leadership professional.
He called it junk food for the brain. Every morning walk with headphones in, every commute with another article queued up, always reaching for the next piece of content in the name of self-improvement. His brain was never getting what it actually needed, which was quiet.
There’s a network in the brain that only activates when we stop consuming. It’s linked to mind wandering, creative insight, and the kind of problem-solving that focused input simply crowds out. We’ve been told that more learning makes better leaders, but the evidence says otherwise.
He tried his morning walk without the podcast and found it harder than expected, though not for the reason he thought. Colleagues arrived at work comparing episodes and referencing things he hadn’t heard, and he felt the pull of that room. That discomfort wasn’t weakness. It was his brain protecting its sense of belonging.
Something shifted over time. He started noticing things he’d walked past for years, and problems he’d been carrying began to resolve on their own. He felt calmer. When he brought the experiment back to his cohort and others tried it, they reported the same.
We are consuming more leadership content than at any point in history, and yet something isn’t adding up. Knowledge does not equal understanding, and understanding does not guarantee behaviour change.
When did you last give your brain the quiet it needs to do something with everything you’ve been feeding it?
