We live in a world that is in a hurry. Speed is our god and we worship it every day. John Mark Comer has an excellent book, “The ruthless elimination of Hurry“. I’m going to hit on some of his high points in today’s blog.
There’s more to life than speed
Our world is hooked on the drug of speed. We want everything to go fast. We live on fast food heated up in a microwave. Audiobooks and youtube videos can be consumed at 2x speed or higher. (I’m guilty). Workout plans are available that guarantee results in 30 days at 10 minutes a day. When it’s time to sleep we can’t calm down, so we take something to put us under.
What ever happened to, “Good things come to those who wait.”? We are going fast but something deep inside us knows that the best things frequently require time and patience. Fine wines must be aged. An athlete, musician, artist, doctor etc. must study and practice. Malcolm Gladwell in his book, “Outliers” talks about the 10,000 hour rule. That is how many hours that are needed to become an expert in anything.
Limit your phone
How can we fight back? Let’s start with our phones. What is the latest time that you want to take a phone call or respond to a text? Now decide what time is the earliest you want to be available on your phone. Go to the settings of your phone and click on “focus”. Next, click on “do not disturb”. Turn on “smart activation”. Now, click on “add schedule”. You can now set up a period of time when your phone will automatically go to do not disturb.
You can also set up do not disturb for locations. This is useful for places like church or work. You put the address in and whenever you are there, the phone automatically is silenced.
If you want certain people to be able to contact you regardless of your do not disturb hours, you can set that up as well. Just select their name under “allow notifications”.
Email and apps
Now that you have set up your do not disturb times, let’s tame those apps and email.
Silence all notifications from your apps and email. Do you really need to know that someone liked the video of your dog being cute? If this is too extreme, how about choosing an app or two and silence them? You will find that you don’t miss it as much as you think you will.
In Comer’s book he talks about setting up times to deal with email. He is extreme. Mondays are the day he does email and he doesn’t do it any other time. Maybe you can limit your email to a certain time in the morning and then again in the evening. No checking in between, it wastes your time.
Silence
We are bombarded with sound. I blogged about it here. We need to be ruthlessly devoted to periodic silence.
Get creative here. Try driving with music off. Walk the dog without listening to anything. Sit in a room for a few minutes and stare at the walls. Anyone living with you will think you’re crazy, but they’ll soon see your attitude and overall health improving. Maybe it’s time to take up meditation? Whatever you choose to do, please understand that it will feel uncomfortable at first. You’re swimming upstream so it will take effort. Yes, silence requires effort.
Other ideas…
Some other ideas from the book include… Try driving the speed limit. (Be careful, you might get run over!). Start physically walking slower. Take an entire day and rest. Cook your own meal. Get rid of your tv…
If anything here resonates with you, I highly recommend that you get Comer’s book and read it…. SLOWLY!
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