In economics, people often discuss tangible and intangible assets.
Tangible assets are things that you can sell, things that you can touch, money, property, or products, and things that have value that can increase or make you rich.
People focus a lot on tangible assets.
It's not just in economics, though, that people focus on tangible assets; of course, it's, well, almost everyone. All of us collect things to make us feel safer, to make us feel that we have what we're supposed to have, either so that we can buy things or so that we can have status within our tribe.
In business and economics, intangible assets are things you can't touch, like intellectual property or brand reputation, things which are ethereal, which are hard to put a number on, but which people will genuinely agree are quite important.
Take, for example, the potential reputational damage to Elon Musk to one side of the American Political Society for his association with the current government. That cost will be measurable now because he made intangible decisions that affected intangible aspects of his work.
But when we apply this concept of intangibles and tangibles to ourselves, we can ask ourselves whether we're balancing the investment intangibles and tangibles because, increasingly, we're driven towards work and collection and purchasing and consuming at the expense of our intangible assets.
For me, intangible assets are things like learning, reading, listening, watching things of value, spending time with people who either bring me joy or make me better, fitness, health, challenge, progress, and growth. All of these things, though, sit outside the collection of money or the collection of tangible assets.
Back to the previous blog about clarity here, taking time to walk, to sit, to think quietly about how much of your life you're spending on the collection of tangibles and how much you're not spending on the collection of intangibles is insightful.
It's never ever too late to start investing in intangibles, and we should never stop trying to be better or curious or stop searching for intellectual advancement.
Blog Post Number - 4143