Tom Vanderbilt notes that the more info one is faced with, the less respect and attention one gives. Walter Kirn claims that ‘researchers estimate that the average city dweller is exposed to 5,000 ads per day, up from 2,000 per day three decades ago.’ We are inundated. It becomes hard to know what is important, what is a priority, what is crucial. As we add distracting technologies into our lives, the flood grows. The truth, as Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton remind us, is that we all have limits to our ability to pay attention; it is a ‘finite resource. At any given moment we are incapable of focusing on more than a few bits of information at a time.’
-Arthur Boers, Living Into Focus, p. 85
Focus is finite. I like that phrase.
My mind goes to my incessant desire to multitask. My job demands it. My schedule demanded it for the past two years.
Sunday, while driving two hours to preach at a rural church, I followed my regular routine. I downloaded a C.S. Lewis book to listen to during the drive. I stopped at my regular gas stop. There’s a TV at the pump. It mostly shows commercials, but it reminds me of Back to the Future 2, which makes it interesting. I was already multitasking: driving and listening to my MP3 player. Then I found that I couldn’t hear my MP3 player over the ads on the gas pump TV. I don’t even know why I just told that story. It seems related to the subject somehow.
We are not God. There is a God, and I am not him. I therefore am not infinite, and never will be. Why can’t I accept that fact? Because, as Calvin says, the human heart is an idol-factory. So, herein lies a paradox. The sooner I accept that my ability to focus is finite, the more productive it will be, for it will be working within the context in which it is meant to work. Focus entails acknowledging that I am limited. I am not omniscient, I am not omnipotent. I do not have the power to gain all knowledge. I do not have the resources to hear every prayer from every human being at one in the same time. I am not God. Time constrains me, space constrains me, weakness constrains me.
Find your limits, confess your limits, work within your limits; then you will have freedom. The freedom of marriage comes from making a commitment to limit yourself to one spouse. Intimacy comes only after such a commitment has been made. Such is also the case with focus. You will find depth when you are willing to limit the subjects of your thoughts. You will find intimacy with ideas when you commit to focusing on those ideas.
Thinking through this idea of recognizing one’s focus to be finite and accepting/working within your limitations, rather than rebelling against them, I was struck by one reason why “finite focus” has not been attractive to me. To narrow one’s focus is to not only say “yes” to something, but to say “no” to a whole lot more. This is experienced as a sort of loss. I don’t like to lose.
So a person doesn’t want to commit to a girl, because what about all the other girls he could be “having”? A person doesn’t want to commit to a job- the glory of one occupation just doesn’t define him enough/feed the ego enough. A person doesn’t want to let go of all the swirling tasks around his day because he is greedy to “suck the marrow out of ALL of life” and the path before him isn’t ENOUGH marrow. Or perhaps this person doesn’t want to focus on specific tasks for the day because he is too AFRAID of what “ball is being dropped” out of sight. A desire to control, a desire for glory, a desire of gluttony, a desire to be omniscient, omnipresent, or omnipotent…a desire for fill-in-the-blank-have-it-all.
I can say that, atleast in my own life, I’ve often recognized that I was very unfocused and distracted, but with little interest in owning my own selfish-desire’s participation in futile-minded-multitasking. Other things participate too, (like intrusive advertisers,) but not wanting to “lose all the possibilities” is a view that sounds harmless, and yet fails to recognize a rebellion of heart against the Only One Who is Sovereign enough to not lose all possibilities.
I once heard that “self pity is merely pride unfulfilled.” In the same way, a person saying they “can’t concentrate because there are just so many ‘needs’ or ‘possibilities'” may just be expressing a less-confident version of “I’m going to own the whole world.” When it is expressed that way, it doesn’t need to be explained. We just make that person the bad guy of our stories, and know why he is bad.
“Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.” -Jeremiah 9:23-24
How far along are you in the book right now? I want to make sure that I don’t get too far ahead or behind.
I did chapter 6 last night, and will be done with chapter 7 tonight. Will be done through chapter 9 this week, and finish the book next week. I’m only reading this book on weekdays.
I don’t really have a lot to say about chapter 7. I might make another post on chapter 6 (not sure yet). After ch. 6, I will probably just write in the comments, rather than making new posts, until next week. Let me know if there’s something I need to opine on at greater length.
“While we may feel better informed, there are consequences. Information overload affects us, our communities, and our society, We cannot take in everything that comes our way, and this adversely influences decision making. Messages arrive faster than we are able to process and this increases the difficulty we have for discerning choices.”
-pg86
I believe the problem lies in being more informed, which does not necessary equate to being better informed. To be better informed would be to have just enough information to make the next step, an efficiency gained not through technological means, but rather as consequence of prayer and communion with the Creator, our Father.
Welcome aboard! We’ll take ‘better’ informed over ‘more’ informed.