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The Next Story: Life Changes
- 02/09/10
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Yesterday I wrote about my desire to be a doer when it comes to the convergence of technology and theology, media and Christian living. I do not want to write a book full of prescriptions that I choose to ignore. And so, as I’ve dedicated increasing amounts of time to research, I’ve begun to examine my own life, my own use of technology and ultimately, its use of me.
Today I’d like to give three quick examples of the ways I’ve had to change my own life as I’ve thought about what it means for me to live in a distinctly Christian way in this media-saturated world. Maybe in the book I’ll write about some of these in greater detail. For now, I will be brief. Each of these is simply a way I’ve found that I can step just a little bit outside the torrent of media and information that always seems so close to overwhelming me.
I recently came to the realization that email owns me. A good technology that should be at my disposal has instead taken over and put me at its disposal. And if you’ve read Postman you’ll know that technology is very good at this. No sooner do we put a technology in our service than we find that it has so changed our lives that suddenly we have become enslaved to it.
When I find myself compulsively glancing at my screen every time I walk by, hoping to see an icon telling me I’ve got a new message, when I unthinkingly pull out my iPhone to check to see if I’ve got any new email, I realize I’ve got a problem. When I sit in meetings with email open, glancing as often to the screen as to the person speaking, I understand that something has gone wrong. Somehow I’ve given email more than it deserves. In my mind I’ve made it into something it is not and something it should never be. Email was never meant to be the first thing I look at in the morning or the last thing I look at before bed.
Hear me when I say that email is not a bad thing. It’s not a good thing either, really; it’s just a thing. I wouldn’t want to say that email is somehow innately destructive. It is an excellent medium for communication and one that serves many purposes very well. It is exceptionally efficient, at least when at its best, and gives us amazing levels of instantaneous access to one another. I wouldn’t want to cut it out of my life and certainly do not intend to.
But email is demanding, especially when given the reins. Recent scientific studies show that there may well be some kind of a correlation between the psychology of email and the psychology of slot machines. A variable interval schedule, as psychologists might know it, draws us back time and again, hoping for the occasional payout. Though most of the time there is no payout when checking email, just like there is usually all cost and no payout when playing slots, there is always the promise of something great. Occasionally we may win a jackpot and occasionally we may get a bit of very good news by email. But most of the time there is no payout at all. Yet our brains seem hard-wired to keep searching, to keep driving us back to the inbox, hoping against hope.
So what have I done? I’ve made email something that I’ve scheduled into my life. Let me back up just a little bit. Thinking about the nature of email and the kind of messages I receive via email, I realized that my mind had been tricking me. Really there was only very, very rarely any exceptional good that could come to me via email—the news that my book proposal had been accepted, the news that a friend had safely delivered her child. Far more often than not my email varies between junk and normal—spam and interesting yet ultimately non-urgent and non-life-changing communiques from friends and family. Such emails are easy to schedule into certain times of day; there is no reason to monitor them on a constant basis. And so I now check email only occasionally—two or three times a day seems to be sufficient. So far I don’t see that it’s had even the smallest amount of negative impact. I do not access email at all in the evenings and have cut far back on the weekends (by way of example, I checked once this past Saturday and not at all on Sunday).
It has shocked me to see that the world keeps turning even when I don’t constantly monitor email. Who would have thought it could be possible? Life goes on.
So much for email. I’ve also stopped gratifying my urge to instantly search for anything that interests me. Very often I find my mind wandering to a person or a topic and before I know it, I’m sitting at a computer and typing the search into Google. Just this evening I had the urge to search for information on Elizabeth Edwards, a book titled How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read and feedback on the new Facebook upgrade. I would then have blown fifteen minutes satisfying these impulses. I have seen that in this wired world knowledge about has become far more important than knowledge of, that the great virtue is in instant access to information. I’m going to try to stop catering to that desire. Instead, I’ll scratch things down in a notebook and look them up later. Or, more often than not, I’ll forget to look them up at all and be no worse off for it. I want to spend far less time searching out new information and more time reflecting on the information I’ve already got.
And this feeds into the third change I am making. Yesterday I went looking for books dealing with distraction. As I did so, I had a video clip playing in a different window and found that I was constantly flipping back and forth between them. The irony was not lost on me. For a long time I’ve been conflicted about A La Carte. It is a feature of this blog that has become quite popular—when people talk to me about what they like about the blog, it is probably second from the top of the list (immediately after book reviews). When I began it, some 1050 posts ago (the first one was in the summer of 2005 and I’ve been quite regularly updating it five times a week since then) I saw it as an opportunity to share a few of the things that had caught my attention the day before. To be honest, it did not evolve much beyond that. It continues to be a bit of a brain dump, or a link dump, if you prefer.
Two things have come to bother me about it. The first is the regular juxtaposition of information. Here I’ll have a story about a terrible natural tragedy that brought about massive loss of life, and right below it I’ll have a link to a silly video parody of something completely unrelated. Somehow that doesn’t seem right to me. The second thing that bothers me is the way it has become a force for distraction. I don’t think any of us really need most of the information we can find through A La Carte. It’s mostly just mindless entertainment, even the best of it. The messages implicit in A La Carte are that we can skim lots of things, but really read nothing; that all news is really just a form of entertainment. It downplays thought and reflection at the expense of immediacy and variety. The messages get lost in the medium.
So here is the plan for A La Carte. It is not going away; it is just changing. What I want to try is to post a single link every day through A La Carte. Rather than posting a list of links that caught my eye, I’ll post a link to a single story along with an assessment of why it is important. If I haven’t found anything particularly important, I won’t post at all. I do not want to be another force of distraction. I want you to know that if I link to something, it is worth your time and attention. Stay tuned tomorrow for the first iteration of the new A La Carte. We’ll see how it goes.
So those are the three changes I’ve already made. They are small things, I’m sure, but they are not without significance. Like so many people, I feel as if technology owns me as much as I own technology. More so, even. I’ve got amazing gadgets and gizmos available to me and each of them plays its own role in my life. I just need to make sure that they are in my control, rather than handing them the reins and following blindly behind them. I think I’ve done far too much of that already.
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Comments (32)
Thank you Tim for sharing this extremely helpful, painful, honest, and applicable reflection!
Yes, a good reminder to all of us of the hold technology has on us. I do look forward to the A la Carte section, but you are right about the knowledge about something contrasting with the knowledge of something. A lot of the A la Carte items are merely entertainment, and life will go on without them.
Bravo, Tim. While I enjoyed looking into ALC in the past, your wisdom has shown through again. I will more eagerly enjoy ALC (and my additional time) in the future.
As Scripture says, there is nothing new under the sun! What this really boils down to is the important matter of self-control. Long before email and the web it was other things that would be a distraction or become a snare for believers in their use of time and energy. Many things which we can give thanks to God for, which we can truly enjoy and which are not at all wrong in themselves can end up becoming masters rather than servants in our lives if we’re not careful. Perhaps modern technology increases the range of things that might fall into this category but I’m not so sure. The root of the problem is of course the human heart, not technology.
I’ve become increasingly aware that this little phrase ‘self-control’ actually sums up my biggest problem in (not) making progress in my Christian life. It would nice to think that my inbox, or Twitter, or reading Tim Challies blog even(!), are the only servants-allowed-to-become-masters problems I have right now, but sadly that would not be a very honest assessment!
Keep up the good work Tim, and I will try to exercise more self-control in the time I spend reading your posts!!
Tim, thanks for posting this. It was a good eye opener about how technology can own us, instead of us owing it. I needed that.
Great post, Tim. I need to change some things in this area too. I could be reading more books rather than trying to cram the entire Internet into my head. With me, I think there’s always a little bit of an irrational fear that I’m missing something interesting. Curiosity is good, but there needs to be boundaries.
Have you cleared the changes to A La Carte with JT? It’s gonna put a dent in his blog. ;-)
Hey … Where’s “A La Carte”? :)
Tim, you’re starting to sound like Merlin Mann at 43folders.com both with Inbox Zero and with his desire not to be the guy with the website that helps people not get things done.
Thanks, Tim. And with that, I’m ending all distractions and signing off.
Thanks for posting this, Tim. It’s important for all of us to be honest about how technology reliance has affected our lives. Personally, it’s a constant battle to not get sucked into the vortex at the expense of my family and responsibilities.
One practical thing I did was to turn the email push off on my phone. I now only get mail on my phone if I intentionally open the client and check for new mail. Now I’m not constantly interrupted by the constant “buzz” of new email coming in.
Now, what to do to manage those pesky social media clients…
You’ve hit me hard Tim. My wife would agree that I show signs of addiction to email, Twitter and Flickr.
I recently picked up a new book at our local library—“The Tyranny of Email.” Really a VERY convicting book, pick it up if you get the chance.
Good provoking issues and things to think about it….
DavidRed Letter Believershttp://www.redletterbelievers.com“Salt and Light”
Tim,A very wise and thought provoking post. Your “discernment” of this problem is to be lauded. Being “owned” by anything but the Lord is not a good thing period.
I’ve always enjoyed your ALC entries. However, I would suggest that instead of posting a daily link that might at times be marginal in value, you might consider a weekly ALC with you posting only the best of the best links to material that you’ve noticed during the preceding week. Of course an occasional exception can be made when a subject arises or an event occurs that justifies a more immediate disclosure or might be about a subject that is related to a current post.
Just a thought…
In Christ,
Dan…
I have been thinking about this lately and have come to similar conclusions Tim. Have you seen the recent Frontline special on this subject? I highly recommend it. It seems researchers are just beginning to study the effect of all this media on the brain and the results are not positive. They had a segment on students at MIT and how they will sit in a lecture with their laptops on, and they will have multiple windows open at the same time, while listening to the lecture! Most of them didn’t think it had any effect on their ability to learn. One of the professors there said something very wise, to the effect, “Technology is neither good nor bad. We need to determine how we should use it, and what effect it is having on us.”
Thanks for the great post and good reminders about technologies time wasters. I look forward to the change in ALC - glad to see its still around, just in a different format. I disconnected from Facebook months ago (and do not miss it).
“When I find myself compulsively glancing at my screen every time I walk by … I realize I’ve got a problem.”
Before email (and since) people would check the mailbox to see if there was anything interesting — cards, letters, anything not a bill or addressed to “occupant.” It’s not the technology that’s the problem but the need to feel valuable to other people.
Great post Tim. Tho I feel a bit conflicted responding… ;-)
Is technology a red herring? Aren’t you suggesting it is the message or information itself - perhaps the need to be updated, informed, communicated etc. that is important? Is it a self-centered issue? Are we feeding a bad appetite? Technology facilitates this - I hear some get an endorphin (addictive) rush when they hear the ding, ping, you got mail… but is that Pavlovian? Isn’t it really the ‘treat’ we are looking for? Are you suggesting the equivalent of blaming McDonald’s (ease of access to bad nutrition) for obesity?
I only suggest it because controlling technology may not be the solution. It is a control mechanism, but does not address why we feel the need to be current or satisfy our hunger for information, communication, visualization… etc. What’s missing? What are we giving up? What are the effects of our misdirected focus?
I have done Facebook. I have several thousand ‘following’ me on Twitter and follow quit a few myself. But like a previous reader, the shine has rubbed off. I haven’t been back at either for months. I don’t feel like I am missing anything. There is not a constant ‘need’ there even though the technology exists.
On the other hand, I do spend too much time on the web, convincing myself that I am doing something productive when I am not. Both are the same ‘technology’. One feeds a need the other does not.
Interested in this thread because it impacts so many today and is relatively brand new - though I suspect the root cause is much older.
Hi TimI understand the Ala Carte thing but I hope that you will continue to highlight some things. Without Ala Carte I would have missed 6rymed. Sometimes I need to hear what she has to say.
At work I am in email all day. It’s how we communicate work stuff. I almost never have irrelevant email at work. At home, Carol and I check our email together once a day, usually sometime in the evening after work. She goes in later and works later on Thursday, so she emails her mom and dad Thursday mornings. Otherwise, we always check it together and send messages together. Her twin sister and husband and her mom and dad also check their email together. She doesn’t email or text on her phone (they can do that??). My phone at work and home is attached to the wall with a wire.
I think that every person needs to decide exactly what is important to them and then use these tools to further their own goals. I don’t have TV cable and rarely turn my TV on. I don’t want to pursue TV people’s goals. At work I can ignore an email for an hour while I’m busy inside a bunch of code. Or I can answer things immediately when I’m just freewheeling at the keyboard.
If you are going to be a writer, then you have to decide what is important to writing. Not what’s important to people in technology ads, not what’s important to me and your other readers here, but what’s important to you becoming productive writing.
For many of the same reasons you state here, I have stepped back and sometimes completely away from a lot of the techy stuff. It seriously begins to own me like an ungodly addiction. As a matter of fact, when I fast, it is not from food, as that does not seem sacrificial to me personally. I often have to remind myself to eat. It is from technology that I fast from… as this sadly HURTS!
What SHOULD be the first thing you do in the morning, and the last in the evening? I don’t think there is any Biblical mandate regarding this. Perhaps it seems banal to you to fit email into those time slots.I dunno. Email is like the telephone or perhaps an answering machine. A technology for communication. Is it a bad thing that you crave communication? I sense a void in your article. What do you plan to do with all the time you are reclaiming from your inbox? What do you suggest WE do with the time we spend on our inboxes?Do you understand that the juxtaposition that doesn’t feel right to you is a side-effect of robotic computer code and not intentional?Heck I sit at work all day waiting for phone calls. Plenty of time there. Should I be reading books? I don’t have money to buy books. I also do online school. So I am online a lot anyway. And I do most of my learning online. How is that a bad thing, especially for a poor man like myself?If you are going to be consistent, you should never answer another phone again. Let them all go to voice mail and check that a few times a day, and rarely on weekends.
You know Tim, one of the best things of being on holidays for two weeks and not having computer access was that I didn’t miss it, the emails, the FB, the Challies blogg… nothing. When I turned on my email of course there was an adrenaline rush, a panic even to get to see what was there. Overall scanning of headings had me save a few (from many hundreds) for reading later and then I dumped the rest. Most were from forums or BB. This is the first time I’ve been back o have a look at Challies blogg. Frankly I haven’t missed much. Tim, to be blunt I think you are addicted to reading and writing to the point of obsession and whilst it may be your vocation, can see little value with what you are trying to achieve this year. You should read and write less and spend some more time with family, friends, and give some of your addicted followers o do likewise, rather than rushing to publish and read every day. I for one would love you to slow down and just publish say every 2nd or 3rd day - for your sake and ours……
I recently picked up a new book at our local library—“The Tyranny of Email.” Really a VERY convicting book, pick it up if you get the chance.
It really is a good book. I was disappointed that he couldn’t resist the off-topic political jabs. But those aside, it was very helpful and, as you say, convicting.
Have you seen the recent Frontline special on this subject? I highly recommend it.
I haven’t. Do you have a title?
If you are going to be consistent, you should never answer another phone again. Let them all go to voice mail and check that a few times a day, and rarely on weekends.
I think you’ve taken things a few orders beyond what I was suggesting. Plus, I was not saying that these are measures every person needs to follow. I just found them helpful in reclaiming dominion over electronic media in my life. I am absolutely open to the suggestion that I am particularly weak here and, therefore, particularly in need of help.
Great post. Have you read the new book “The Tyranny of Email?” Similar thoughts and well laid-out.
Still can’t wait to read this upcoming book of yours, Tim.
Great post. I like to share my way of getting rid of my addiction to check mail and news through the internet more then necessary and always first thing in the morning. I said to myself: what is the most important news you want to know? it is the second coming of Christ! Will you know it through the internet? No, the clouds will roll back as a scroll; I will know it in a blick of an eye! It didn’t happen , so I can read my bible quietly!
As usual…a lot to think about. Since being at home with Cora I find myself wasting so much more time checking email, facebook…reading blogs, etc. It is stuff I enjoy so much more if I am not indulging and wasting time.
Tim, it’s called Digital Nation and you can watch it on their website http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/. What’s especially helpful is the personal perspective from the two “reporters” on the story. One is a working mother with children who are old enough to be on a computer. She talks about how it affects her and her family. The other is a guy named Douglas Rushkoff who apparently is a popular tech reporter who predicted almost 20 years ago about how wonderful life was going to be after everything went digital. He has a different perspective now.By the way, they did a similar show focusing on kids’ online behavior a couple years ago called Growing Up Online. That was good too, although a little disturbing to see how little control these parents had over their teenagers online use.
Hurray! Great, helpful post. Ditto all that with me.
Thanks Tim— This was helpful as a reader and one who has wondered at your seemingly “superhuman” ability to handle so much information and accomplish so much… Thanks for being willing to humbly and instructively share your own weaknesses, I was so blessed by it—
Do you think I have a problem if I’ve spent time collecting 114 apps in my iTunes — and I don’t own an iPhone? (getting one Saturday)
Tim,
Once again, your honesty is a breath of fresh air. I thoroughly enjoy your straight-forward approach to the things that are hindering your desire to be a doer.