A week ago I noticed that I was bouncing back and forth between tabs in my web browser, my graphic design programs, and e-mail software rapidly to the point where I didn’t even finish the blog I was reading, project I was working on or person I was e-mailing before I bounced away.  What was going on?  Whatever this lack of extended focus was, I wanted to figure it out and reverse it fast!

Coincidentally, right after I had realized this new undesirable tendency of mine that I wanted to work on, I read a chapter on attention and the social media world in Brian Solis’ book Engage! that spoke great insight into our culture’s diminishing attention spans.

Some excerpts and ideas:

• “The era of now….is conditioning us to expect information as it happens.”
• “We’re experiencing an increasingly thinning state of focus resulting from volumes of information flying at us within our networks of interest.”
• “With the pace of the information published through the activity streams we follow, our attention spans are overloaded and scattered.”

It’s not just me.  It’s not just you.  Many of us have noticed this attention deficit and it is effecting the way we relate to life. We feel we must always be connected, always be informed, always be on top of things in the social media realm.  We have become a culture of smart phones used 24/7.

I’m a big fan of social media.  I love how it can quickly connect me with people I appreciate who live all over the map and inform me of the latest news.  I also like multi-tasking on my computer and doing so to make me more productive. But, the moment we lose focus or feel that we have to be connected, I think it can become detrimental.

Could it be that this necessity of being connected and the first to be informed stems from our need to know we are valuable and wanted?

The problem is feeling wanted, loved, and innately valuable does not come from a screen.  It never will. Neither will feeling fulfilled in life. That will only come from knowing God and living life beyond the screen. We can slowly start to disengage life by increasingly being engaged digitally.

Take a step back for a moment. How do you relate to life?  Do you truly taste and enjoy your food? Do you see the pattern of the bark on the tree you walk by? Do you notice the clouds over head and the colors within them? Do you look people in the eye and care how their day is going?

Multi-tasking is great.  Information is great.  Social media is a blast! But loosing your engagement in the world immediately around you could result in a half-hearted state of living, one that will not fulfill.

Know you are loved. Know you are valued. It’s ok to be screen-free for a moment. Look around and enjoy life’s beauty. Engage life with all of your senses. Be where you are.