SARAH STILES: I teach a course in social entrepreneurship
and I like to say that social entrepreneurship is
a lifestyle of wellness.
If we are to address, solve, or at least ameliorate
some of these apparently intractable social problems,
we've got to be at our best.
And so, I tell students pick two out of three:
mind, body, spirit.
And, of course, they're such go-getters,
they'll go for all three.
SARAH STILES: And so, the other semester, I
used fitness trackers for the mind, body part of it.
And to be filed under the quantified self,
students made their wellness goals,
used the fitness tracker, and every Tuesday, we'd
have a check in.
They had accountability buddies.
And they were keeping track.
How's your sleep?
Are you getting up and moving?
And it was fascinating to me to see
that in a course that doesn't technically have anything
to do with fitness, this gadget that they had,
students said they were sitting around in the library,
and then it's time to get up and walk around, and they did.
They were standing at the bus stop and, "Oh my gosh.
It's late.
I've got to get my 10,000 steps in."
And they run in place.
SARAH STILES: Most interesting, one young man, super fit,
super bright, but he was always exhausted,
and he didn't know why.
He was eating well.
And after using the fitness tracker,
he realized he is not getting a restful night's sleep.
He didn't know that.
No wonder he was exhausted.
And so there's an example of how they brought wellness
into their lives and realized that when we are well, then
we can start taking care of other people.
And they're high performers even when
they're not well, so imagine.