{"id":15913,"date":"2013-11-11T10:21:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T15:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cccc.org\/news_blogs\/?p=15913"},"modified":"2022-08-19T14:21:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T18:21:57","slug":"thinking-an-endangered-skill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cccc.org\/news_blogs\/john\/2013\/11\/11\/thinking-an-endangered-skill\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking: An Endangered Skill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>How often do you check your email? Or Facebook? Twitter? Another site? How often are you distracted by the digital world? Do you sleep with your smartphone at your bedside?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The question I really want to ask is: What is the longest period of uninterrupted time you&#8217;ve had in the past week to think? To really think?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ministry leaders who want longevity in office cannot afford not to have a lot of <strong>high quality time for thinking<\/strong> about mission; about current&nbsp;results of their mission activities, and even more&nbsp;importantly, about what they will do differently in the future pursuit of their mission. Unfortunately, there is an insidious trap set to prevent us from doing just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Digital Distractions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In <em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.ca\/gp\/product\/0273785850\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=15121&amp;creative=330641&amp;creativeASIN=0273785850&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=wwwccccorg-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Distraction Trap: How to Focus in a Digital World<\/a><\/strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"\/\/ir-ca.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=wwwccccorg-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=15&amp;a=0273785850\" alt=\"\"><\/em>, Frances Booth makes a powerful and well-researched case that the Internet is changing the way we think, how we are literally re-wiring our brains for the kind of thinking that grazing on the Internet and social media encourages, and then presents a plan for how to master the\u00a0digital world\u00a0and restore time for thinking, relationships, personal refreshment, and even sleeping well, while maintaining the Internet&#8217;s benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of the attention-grabbing research&nbsp;findings&nbsp;she cites are that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>many people&nbsp;have bought in to the myth of multitasking, which research shows is about the only thing you actually <em>get worse at the more you do it<\/em><\/li><li>by being constantly connected, you are constantly thinking light &#8211;&nbsp;zooming about, but staying nowhere<\/li><li>we have a lot of scatterbrains who know how to search and scan, but who have lost the ability to read, focus, reflect,&nbsp;and think deeply<\/li><li>nothing ever has the full attention of constantly wired people &#8211; they are not fully present with the people around them (Has anybody ever said to you &#8220;But I told you last week we were going out with the Smiths tonight!&#8221;) nor are they fully present with the digital world (&#8220;Exactly what was the content that&nbsp;you scanned yesterday?&#8221;)<\/li><li>digitally distracted people&nbsp;never have fully formed thoughts because they are distracted before long and research shows they often don&#8217;t get back to where they were (&#8220;I lost the thought I just had!&#8221;), and<\/li><li>Internet-addicted people&nbsp;have surrendered their own agendas in favour of following digital trails of candy that lead them aimlessly through the&nbsp;Web to inconsequential places that occupy their time and leave them too exhausted to think for themselves.&nbsp;What&nbsp;have you traded the minutes of your life for?<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">No Time for Distractions!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Leaders need lots of time for deep, reflective&nbsp;thinking and yet they also tend to have all the latest gadgets that leave them connected to the web wherever in the world they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What we are losing is the creativity, original&nbsp;ideas,&nbsp;and insights that come with time&nbsp;invested in uninterrupted thinking. We also lose quality of sleep, long term memory (we remember search terms rather than content), time for hobbies, conversations (broadcasting&nbsp;status updates and 140 character quips substitutes for two-way discussions) and real, in-person relationships (in exchange for virtual &#8216;friends&#8217;).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Aside from larger ministries that have a chief operating officer role, a ministry&#8217;s senior leader usually doesn&#8217;t have a whole lot of time for thinking because the daily demands on their time are so high. That makes it all the more important that leaders in this situation protect themselves from digital distractions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Break Free of the Internet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>We have to learn to fight against the Internet&#8217;s allure &#8211; its power over us is that it is repetitive, intensive, interactive, and addictive.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-15913-1' id='fnref-15913-1' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(15913)'>1<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;There are lots of good reasons to use the Internet, but it must remain our servant, not become our master.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the last week, I&#8217;ve been tracking my own digital distractions and have been surprised at how powerful the urge to check for new emails or other updates actually is (<em>even while I&#8217;m writing this post!<\/em>). I have successfully reduced (for a few days anyway) my shifting between windows by following the first of Frances Booth&#8217;s suggestions, and I have identified the conditions that make me more susceptible to distraction. I look forward to completing the rest of her plan in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Call to Think<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Ministry leaders, my goal today is to make you sensitive to digital distractions in your life that are gradually sapping your ability for deep thought. Don&#8217;t leave leftover time for thinking time. Plan it. Schedule it. Ruthlessly fight against anything that would distract you from that precious uninterrupted time that is so precious for the future of your ministries!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class='footnotes' id='footnotes-15913'><div class='footnotedivider'><\/div><ol><li id='fn-15913-1'> Nicholas Carr in <em>The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains<\/em>. 2011. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-15913-1'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How often do you check your email? Or Facebook? Twitter? Another site? How often are you distracted by the digital world? Do you sleep with your smartphone at your bedside? The question I really want to ask is: What is the longest period of uninterrupted time you&#8217;ve had in the&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cccc.org\/news_blogs\/john\/2013\/11\/11\/thinking-an-endangered-skill\/\" class=\"linkbutton\">More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ts_fic_featured_image_caption":"Used with permission. http:\/\/www.sxc.hu\/photo\/1370977.","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553,89,554],"tags":[109,4,56,589],"series":[],"class_list":["post-15913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-effective","category-leadership-personal","category-thoughtful","tag-discernment","tag-favourite-reads","tag-leadership-responsibility","tag-organizational-self-awareness"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Thinking: An Endangered Skill - CCCC Blogs<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cccc.org\/news_blogs\/john\/2013\/11\/11\/thinking-an-endangered-skill\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thinking: An Endangered Skill - CCCC Blogs\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How often do you check your email? Or Facebook? Twitter? Another site? How often are you distracted by the digital world? Do you sleep with your smartphone at your bedside? The question I really want to ask is: What is the longest period of uninterrupted time you&#8217;ve had in the... 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