February 23, 2012
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Distractions and a Mind Overwhelmed…
Today at a joint pastors prayer meeting two of the pastors shared that they are fasting (avoiding) from sports until Easter… no fantasy basketball, no football or baseball news, and worst of all, no Jeremy Lin until early April. They admitted that they really had to wrestle with God until deciding to do it. But now that they aren’t distracted by sports news/highlights all the time, they say that there has been a lot more clarity in their thoughts. They are realizing just how distracted and overwhelmed our culture is now by the internet.
I’ve read different reports that looking at Facebook or Twitter is more addictive than smoking and drinking. I think those reports are true. Media and information, whether its sports, fashion, Facebook, or even just news, is all constantly being updated and is all FREE. There is a lie that goes through the mind that just glancing at it doesn’t require much time and is therefore justifiable at any spare moment during the day. But so often, those spare moments get dragged out by an article we like or postings on Facebook that we get wrapped up in.
They say during March Madness (the college basketball mega-tournament every March) that productivity in the workplace drops dramatically. It isn’t so much people stopping work to watch the games, it’s people constantly “glancing” at the scoreboards online for updates. The “glances” are so repetitive that people lose focus and are no longer effective at what they are doing. They might clock a lot of hours at work, but their mind is so overrun with distractions that their actual work accomplished could have been done a lot more quickly and with a lot more quality.
And I must admit, I too struggle with all the distractions. Sometimes I feel my mind is overwhelmed by thoughts of different things I could check online at the moment. My favorite mode of discipline was one I heard from another pastor. For a season he and his wife decided to limit themselves to thirty minutes a day on the internet. Thirty minutes sounds like a lot of time, but considering how often people now look at the internet via their iPhone and how often people “glance” at updates online, thirty minutes isn’t much at all. It’s plenty if you are disciplined and keep your internet checking to one chunk of time, but it’s very little if you are undisciplined and keep “glancing” throughout the day (I keep quoting the word glance because so often those glances turn into time consuming stares).
I’ve decided that until Easter I will not look at the internet (aside from North Korea news, Israel news, updating this blog, and checking messages on Facebook) until I’ve had my quiet time with the Lord each day. And then my internet time will be limited to 30 minutes. I’ve done the 30 minute fast before and I’ve also done full blown media fasts before as well, but not the waiting until after the solid quiet time. Should be helpful for me this time around. We shall see…
Stay focused, friends. God bless!
