Coping with a Culture of Distraction
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This sermon deals with the common 21st century distractions that rob us of focus in our lives. Pastor Steve deals with notification distractions, tyrannical urgencies and the myth of multi-tasking.
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Coping with a Culture of Distraction
- 1. COPING WITH A …
- 2. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Stop! My brain has too many tabs open.
- 3. Coping with a Culture of Distraction First Point We are overwhelmed with Notification Distractions.
- 4. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Notification Distractions
- 5. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Notification Distractions Beeps Chirps Tweets Buzzes
- 6. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Robinson Meyer Technology Reporter for The Atlantic
- 7. Coping with a Culture of Distraction “Our results suggest that mobile phones can disrupt attention performance even if one does not interact with the device.
- 8. Coping with a Culture of Distraction “As mobile phones become more integrated into more and more tasks it may become increasingly difficult for people to set their phones aside and concentrate fully on the task at hand…”
- 9. Coping with a Culture of Distraction “If people are genuinely distracted by notification- induced thoughts, some problematic mobile phone use could be prompted by the desire to escape that feeling,”
- 10. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Dr. David Greenfield Psychologist
- 11. Coping with a Culture of Distraction "The analogy that I use is right before they go to bed, the last thing they do before they pass out is check their phone and the minute they open their eyes, they check their phone, Doesn't that sound like a smoker?” Dr. David Greenfield
- 12. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Psalm 46 1God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 2Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, 3though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah
- 13. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Psalm 46 6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. 7 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
- 14. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Psalm 46 10“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” 11The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
- 15. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Psalm 119:148 My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise.
- 16. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Second Point The Pressure of E-Tyrannical Urgency
- 17. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Tyranny of the Urgent “There is a regular tension between things that are urgent and things that are important — and far too often, the urgent wins.” Charles Hummel
- 18. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Exodus 18 17b “What you are doing is not good. 18 You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone.
- 19. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Mark 1 35 Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.
- 20. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Mark 1 36 Later Simon and the others went out to find him. 37 When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.”
- 21. Coping with a Culture of Distraction It’s been 5 minutes since I sent that text. FIVE. WHOLE. MINUTES.
- 22. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Facebook says you’re awake. Why haven’t you returned my call yet!
- 23. Coping with a Culture of Distraction I wrote you 3 times. Why haven’t you answered my email?
- 24. Coping with a Culture of Distraction “Frequently using a smartphone contributes to a blurring of the boundaries between work and leisure time.”
- 25. Coping with a Culture of Distraction “It can lead to increased productivity, but that is often achieved at the cost of higher stress levels and lower employee satisfaction which in the long run can lead to impaired performance.”
- 26. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Third Point Too Many Balls in the Air
- 27. Coping with a Culture of Distraction The Myth of Multi- Tasking
- 28. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Dr. JoAnn Deak Author of “Your Fantastic Elastic Brain”
- 29. Coping with a Culture of Distraction “We’re creating a generation of minds who have extreme difficulty dealing with long- term input… Anything that isn’t multitasking is perceived as boring.” Dr. JoAnn Deak
- 30. Coping with a Culture of Distraction 2 Timothy 1:7 ESV For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. KJV For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
- 31. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Philippians 3 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
- 32. Coping with a Culture of Distraction Proverbs 25:28 A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.
- 33. COPING WITH A …
Notas del editor
- After 3 months of being locked into a series I finally had the freedom to preach a stand alone sermon on any topic I want. These are really hard sermons to prepare. You spend half your week thinking and praying through what to share, which gives me a lot less time to actually research and write. But the pondering is good. It this image distracting you? I hope so. I very much intend it to. I think that this is now we live in the 21st century. I believe that when history has progressed several decades and gains the benefit of looking back at now with a broader perspective the beginning of the 21st century will be described as a culture of distraction. Constantly connected. Continually bombarded with input. 24 hour news cycles punctuated every 15 minutes some notification sound and with the words, “Breaking News” This week I came across a saying that sums up this culture. Before introducing the saying I need to share one habit that I have. When I research I open as many as 30-40 tabs at a time. I literally crash any computer I have. My office computer as 4GB of RAM. I could crash 16 GB. So, with that piece of personal bio, let me share the saying:
- Stop! My brain has too many tabs open. The problem isn’t just my browser. It’s me. I’m constantly thinking in multiple directions. I often feel distracted. So I decided to preach on this topic. And guess what happened. I had a week of constant distraction. Catherine could tell you. It wasn’t all bad stuff. But every time I began a task, there was a knock at the door, or the phone rang for me, or something came up at home. Stuff like that happened every day to the point where I was too distracted to think about my sermon on distraction. Friday the air conditioner went out. No big deal. It got fixed really fast thanks to our great landlords and friends. But by the time I came home to deal with it I realized what God was up to. He opened so many tabs for me that I would live my sermon. Not only would I ponder ideas, but I would feel it deeply… the pressure of living with too many tabs open. The feeling that the blue screen of death is just around the corner. Am I alone in this? If I am I’ll stop preaching and call a doctor! But I think I have company in this room. I think that we are all feeling this way to some degree or another. Let’s see if we can understand the problem more fully and explore some of God’s anient wisdom concerning our modern struggles.
- My first point is that We are overwhelmed with Notification Distractions. Notification Distractions are not an entirely new phenomenon. In fact, every one of us in this room has grown up with them. The doorbell or door-knocker are examples of old school notification distractions. When the bell rings you drop what you’re doing and head for the door. Except for our older seniors, most of us grew up with another 20th century notification distraction… the telephone. This one introduced a polite element of choice. If you ignore the door bell you have to hide in another room. You feel rude to the person outside. But the phone can be ignored… by some of us. I, for example, can ignore the phone. If I’m busy, I pause and wait for the answering machine and screen whether the call requires my immediate attention. Don’t look at me that way… most of you do this. But some of you can’t. The phone has a much stronger gravitational pull on my wife. She resists it with discomfort. That’s her gracious side coming through in a big way.
- The later 20th century introduced some new technologies, and with them and new set of notification distractions. It started with cordless phones that freed you from the tether within your home. Now your phone could follow you into every room. Then came the first cell phones. They didn’t fit in your pocket, but they did fit in your car. They didn’t fit in your budget easily… I remember one time Cindy and I broke down in our car shortly after getting married. Cindy had a housewares business that involved flea market sales in remote locations. She had one of these ginormous cell phones. I was glad for that phone when we broke down. I was also glad we had AAA. The service rep at AAA put us on hold while finding a towing company. I think she forgot about us. We had to call back. Eventually we got our free tow, but later that month we got a $48 cell phone charge for that call. Back then the biggest problem was expense.
- However, the 21st century has introduced a whole new set of sophisticated options. Now our phones are pocket-sized. Not only that, they have gotten smart. Our phones are really pocket computers with more processing power than the computers that put men on the moon in the 1960s. And this new smart phone technology has brought a whole new set of notification distractions. Beeps, chirps, tweets, buzzes and an endless variety of ring tones have become a constant backdrop in our lives. Social media has amped it up big time. Every facebook comment on a post… every tweet from a friend or LinkedIn message announces itself with a notification beep of some kind. Behind these brief and low volume beeps was a theory… if it’s brief enough and low volume enough it won’t break your stride… you’ll simply glance, screen and move on. That’s the theory, but what are the facts.
- A new study from three researchers at Florida State University suggests that merely receiving a push notification is as distracting as responding to a text message or a phone call. The study asked more than 150 students to complete a well-known test of sustained attentional performance. For that test, subjects are shown a series of single digits on a screen. A new digit is displayed about every second. Students are supposed to tap the keyboard every time the digit changes, unless the new digit is 3. Everyone took the test twice: the first time, they did it uninterrupted by their devices; the second time, assistants placed calls or texts to some of the students’ phones. The researchers found that performance on the assessment suffered if the student received any kind of audible notification. That is, every kind of phone distraction was equally destructive to their performance: An irruptive ping distracted people just as much as a shrill, sustained ring tone. It didn’t matter, too, if a student ignored the text or didn’t answer the phone: As long as they got a notification, and knew they got it, their test performance suffered.
- The study Meyer is citing was done by Stothart, Cary; Mitchum, Ainsley; Yehnert, Courtney. They published this conclusion in an article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology entitled “The attentional cost of receiving cell phone notifications” They said, “Our results suggest that mobile phones can disrupt attention performance even if one does not interact with the device.
- As mobile phones become more integrated into more and more tasks it may become increasingly difficult for people to set their phones aside and concentrate fully on the task at hand…” What I found slightly surprising here was the fact that no matter how brief the distraction, it had a measurable effect. However, what the researchers present next was far more concerning.
- The researchers added that the feeling of divided attention becomes so uncomfortable that it lures you to look at the phone even when you shouldn’t, like in a business meeting or when driving. They added. If people are genuinely distracted by notification-induced thoughts, some problematic mobile phone use could be prompted by the desire to escape that feeling,” Do you catch what they are saying? We feel uncomfortable when we don’t have a phone fix and the discomfort increases over time. Does that sound familiar? To me, that sounds remarkably like chemical addiction! Is it possible that you and I are not just in the habit of constantly checking our phones, but that we are becoming addicted to them?
- Dr. David Greenfield, the director of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction, says around 90% of Americans would fall in the category of overusing, abusing or misusing their devices, according to a recent nationwide telephone survey he did with 1,000 people in conjunction with AT&T.
- "The analogy that I use is right before they go to bed, the last thing they do before they pass out is check their phone and the minute they open their eyes, they check their phone," said Greenfield during an interview. "Doesn't that sound like a smoker?
- Psalm 46 begins with a description of great social upheaval and turbulence. 1God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 2Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, 3though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah The Psalmist here finds confidence in the midst of seething trouble. The Psalmist doesn’t fully describe the trouble, though it seems to be related to the boasts and incursions of Israel’s enemies. It is said that when Martin Luther was facing great turbulence in his life as he sought to bring major reforms to an unwilling church, one of his principle sources of comfort was the 46th Psalm. God is our refuge. No matter how crazy the world gets. No matter how many Fox and CNN breaking news notifications you receive, God remains on the throne. We see this especially as we continue through this great psalm.
- 6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. 7 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah There’s that word again. Selah. It is used 74 times in the Bible. It is from an ancient root that means lifted up. It seems to have been initially used to describe a lifted up rock formation. Yet, eventually, Selah seems to have come to be used as a musical notation indicating some type of pause. Some bible scholars combine these usages and suggest that Selah means pause and look up. Stop and meditate on the words you have just sang. This fits especially well as we look at the final two verses of this Psalm.
- 10“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” 11The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah Being still is fast becoming a lost art. We have filled all of our down time. We play solitaire or Candy Crush Saga on the toilet. We facebook and tweet in the doctor’s office. When we went to New York recently I noticed how much quieter it was in the Subway cars and trains. People used to chat. Now their faces were buried in their phones. So was mine. It was almost eery because I left New York City before smart phones caught on. I was seeing the change all at once. It was quiet, but not still. Jesus fasted and encouraged his followers to fast in order to become more dependent upon God. I find myself wondering whether we would give up food more easily than our phones! Maybe it’s time we try a technology fast. Understand that I am preaching to myself as well. I am one of those people who reaches for the phone in the morning and checks it before turning in. Like many of you, I am one of those people who often falls asleep with the tv on in the background and the phone at my side. Listen to the contrast we see in the psalms concerning the late night.
- Psalm 119:148 My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise. Stillness. Solitude. Meditation upon God’s promises. These are the things that fill our souls up. But they have become a rarity for us. Perhaps that is why we are both informed and empty… dialed in and tuned out at the same time.
- As I consider our culture of distraction I think that there is another key pressure that is building. I would call it the pressure of E-Tyrannical Urgency. Now the Tyranny of the Urgent is not something new. In fact, it hearkens back to a book written in the 1960s by Charles Hummel.
- Hummel said, ““There is a regular tension between things that are urgent and things that are important — and far too often, the urgent wins.” Although Hummel coined the phrase, the issue of tyrannical urgency can be seen on the pages of the Bible. In Exodus 18 Moses is visited by his father-in-law Jethro. You probably remember the story. Moses was the exclusive judge for all of Israel, a nation of 2-3 million people. Folks with routine disputes stood around for hours waiting for Moses to rule on petty matters of law like a dispute over a bridal contract or something that in our day would wind up in small claims court. Jethro witnesses Moses’ burden and the burden of the people dealing with a less than swift justice. He says to Moses:
- Exodus 18 17b “What you are doing is not good. 18 You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone. In this case Moses had placed himself under a tyrannical urgency. God never told Moses that he was to be a one man legal system. This decision came from Moses. He allowed every small dispute to become urgent and in the process created a ridiculous amount of pressure. It think it’s important for us to see that this burden is often self-inflicted. But that is not always the case. Sometimes it is a result of others who impose their tyrannical urgencies upon us.
- No one gives us a better example of balance in life than Jesus. Look at Mark 1 verse 35: 35 Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Jesus is in the midst of a crushing ministry load. He has been preaching, teaching, healing, delivering and discipling… non-stop. People are constantly clammering for his time. I could easily have used this verse to address our previous point concerning notification distractions. Jesus knew what he needed to do in order to be still. He found a place of solitude and connected with His Father. This is a pattern of behavior that we will see repeated several times. I believe it was Jesus’ every day practice. But let’s look further in our text:
- 36 Later Simon and the others went out to find him. 37 When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” Do you see what Simon and the others represent? The pressure of tyrannical urgency. The sick are looking for the Healer. The demonized and those in bondage are looking for the Deliverer. The downcast came to hear the Encourager. The poor came to hear the one who preached good news to them also. They didn’t come to see the apostles… they came to see Jesus. I think that Simon and the other disciples are feeling the pressure. The natives are getting restless. They want Jesus to feel it too. “Everyone is looking for you.” A few minutes ago I spoke of E-Tyrannical Urgency. Let me explain the extra letter and this phrase that I made up. I think that e-mail and e-communications have become the new tyrannical urgencies in our lives. When is the last time that someone sent you a message like this.
- It’s been 5 minutes since I sent that text. FIVE. WHOLE. MINUTES. I couldn’t resist this picture. This girl gives the stink eye better than almost anyone. Have you noticed how there is a growing pressure for constant connection? It’s interesting. Cindy and I got a message this week that you can now send text messages to your kids during the school day and it won’t get them in trouble. They are allowed to check their messages at lunch and study halls. I was happy about this. But I bet that I know what lay behind this… parents were applying pressure. Don’t tell us we can’t be in constant communication with our own kids. Sometime during the past decade we all became pastors, doctors and neurosurgeons. We are all on call.
- Or how about this one. Facebook says you’re awake. Why haven’t you returned my call yet! Social media is making it harder and harder to conceal your whereabouts or your availability. And this is causing expectations to soar. If you have time, you should have time for me. I don’t want to just pick on the females. Here is what I call a frustrated E-male.
- I wrote you 3 times. What haven’t you answered my email? These three examples I’ve given all have to do with pressure from friends. However, there is another key aspect to this tyrannical urgency, and that is the expectation of employers. Often the employer is all too eager to provide a smart phone. But with that phone comes an expectation of constant availability and lightning fast response times.
- In a recent article in the Journal of CyberPsychology Daantye Derks and Arnold B. Bakker wrote: Frequently using a smartphone contributes to a blurring of the boundaries between work and leisure time.”
- “It can lead to increased productivity, but that is often achieved at the cost of higher stress levels and lower employee satisfaction which in the long run can lead to impaired performance.” I want to say a word of thanks to all of you. Honestly, this has not been my experience. I have found that you value my family time and respect my time off and sermon prep time out of the office. I could not keep doing what I do if I were under the constant pressure of responding to every request immediately. But some of you have not been so blessed. You understand this pressure to answer every message immediately. Some of us have done this to ourselves. We are like Moses. We have a bit of a Messiah complex and think that everything will come apart at the seams without us. This is one of the first let downs of retirement… learning that your company survives without you… Quite nicely! Some of us have allowed others to place their sense of urgency on us. We need to learn the lesson Jesus teaches us about boundaries and priorities. Jesus took time for himself. He lived on mission, and knew that sometimes being on mission means going off the grid. Accomplishing what is important does mean saying “No” to tyrannical urgencies including the cyber variety of e-communications.
- Let’s look at one more aspect of the Culture of Distraction. Too many balls in the air. That is my simple word picture for what has become a major myth in our day… the myth of multi-tasking.
- Now multi-tasking itself is not a myth… it is a 21st century reality. Your boss expects you to do more than one thing at a time. So does your family. We expect our students to get straight A’s and hold down a job. Or, might I say the unspeakable… we expect them to succeed in school and do 2 sports without missing a beat. Multi-tasking is viewed as an essential skill. People who lack this ability have a lid upon their potential. So what’s the myth? The myth is that we can do five things at once and do them all well. It is the belief that there is no down-side to multi-tasking. Now, let’s wrestle with the facts.
- Psychologist and Educator, Dr. JoAnn Deak, author of the book “Your Fantastic Elastic Brain” has done some important research into multi-tasking. Her research brought her to the conclusion that your brain is only really able to focus on one thing at a time. We are not like computers. I love Windows. I can open multiple tabs and click between them instantly. There is not much of a loss of time… just a fraction of a second. It’s point and click, or for those of you who are old school and only open two or three things at a time, Alt-Escape will do it. But our brain shuts down a task whenever we open a new task. It can’t bounce between tasks nearly as well as we think. And when we try to do it, guess what happens? Mistakes double in frequency. But there was a fascinating aspect of her research that explains our determination to mult-task. Although the brain can’t do two things at once, the process of task switching causes the brain to release pleasure hormones. She states:
- We’re creating a generation of minds who have extreme difficulty dealing with long-term input… Anything that isn’t multitasking is perceived as boring.” I think that this research has tremendous application in our faith. Jesus has called us to a mission. The Great Commission. Any mission requires focus and an attention to details. There is a scripture that addresses this very directly. Paul was clearly a man with a mission. And Paul was training Timothy, preparing him to join him in fulfilling the missional call of Christ. Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:7:
- For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. Notice that the King James version uses the phrase, a sound mind. For the ancient Greeks this is one of those which came first, the chicken or the egg kind of questions. Does self-control contribute to a sound mind or does a sound mind exhibit itself in self-control. The answer is YES. Having a disciplined mind is an important aspect of serving God well.
- I think that Paul adds to our understanding of how to fulfill our God-given mission in this exhortation to the Philippians in Philippians 3:13-14: 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Notice that the pressing forward requires a forgetting? It’s as if Paul read Dr. Deaks. Or maybe the God who created our Fantastic Elastic Brains gave him this insight. We need to task switch. We need to turn off the past and reboot our minds, looking forward towards the prize. This verse not only addresses the danger of multi-tasking. It also addresses the danger of nostalgia paralgia. We can become so focused on the way things were that we become lame and unable to move forward. Nostalgia is a form of multi-tasking. In trying to live both in the past and present we find ourselves unable to move towards the future. What is your 1 thing? If you are a Christ-follower then that should be your primary passion. Focus doesn’t just happen. It’s a determined choice. I don’t’ need to give you 5 steps on how to unplug. I really don’t. You already know in your heart what you need to do. You probably have been feeling guilty about the amount of time you spend with your devices, especially when compared to your time with God and His people. The answer isn’t insight. It’s a matter of discipline.
- I leave you with a proverb and a powerful word picture: A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. In order to live in a culture of distraction we need to build some walls of self-discipline and create that calm in the midst of the chaos. It is only then that we will be able to live peaceable lives that truly attract others, because the time will come when those living in the culture of chaos will be strangely drawn towards those who live with passion and focus.
- After 3 months of being locked into a series I finally had the freedom to preach a stand alone sermon on any topic I want. These are really hard sermons to prepare. You spend half your week thinking and praying through what to share, which gives me a lot less time to actually research and write. But the pondering is good. It this image distracting you? I hope so. I very much intend it to. I think that this is now we live in the 21st century. I believe that when history has progressed several decades and gains the benefit of looking back at now with a broader perspective the beginning of the 21st century will be described as a culture of distraction. Constantly connected. Continually bombarded with input. 24 hour news cycles punctuated every 15 minutes some notification sound and with the words, “Breaking News” This week I came across a saying that sums up this culture. Before introducing the saying I need to share one habit that I have. When I research I open as many as 30-40 tabs at a time. I literally crash any computer I have. My office computer as 4GB of RAM. I could crash 16 GB. So, with that piece of personal bio, let me share the saying: