Dealing With Distractions

Life is full of distractions. There are so many things that can eat up our time if we allow it. There is the take home point at which we make it or break it…if we allow it. I am fully convinced that we make time for the things that are most important to us. Something of great importance needs to be done but we say we don’t have time. Why not? The kids have soccer, baseball, table tennis lessons and we don’t want to miss our favorite shows…so we don’t have time. We all do this. We all make room for the things that are most important to us.

The main problem when it comes to allowing distractions to creep into our lives is our idea of what is important and time worthy can get defined from a worldly perspective rather than a godly one. We end up spending more time in entertainment than we do with our spouse in meaningful conversation. We spend more time on the computer than we do playing with and teaching our children.

So what have we made time for and what does that exclude from our schedule? Which things might we list, if asked, as higher priorities than the things we actually do? What keeps us from pulling the trigger and making those necessary adjustments? Sometimes these adjustments are forced upon us in times of crises or emergency when the priority is thrust upon us and it is clear what has to be done. If you found out your spouse was seriously injured and was in the hospital. Would you stay at work? Would you sit at home and watch TV? Would you surf the net or keep the kids at the soccer game? Of course not. Something else more important has happened and you make room and time for it in your schedule. Those aren’t the times that worry me. The times that worry me are those times when we purposefully choose to allow distraction into our lives in ways that are consuming and damaging to those things that are more important in scope, priority and value. I am not saying there is no room for fun in our lives or that every moment we must be doing something serious. There is room for taking a break from the big items at time. But those breaks become unhealthy when they begin damaging things higher up the priority list because of the frequency and intensity of our involvement in them.

So what things tend to be most distracting? How do we determine our boundaries in advance so that we limit distractions to a healthy level? How do you determine when the things that distract you have become detrimental to things of higher priority and importance? We all deal with distractions…some times we are just more aware of them than at other times. Maybe it is time we took a moment to think through our list and decide how much is too much or whether some things can stay on our list of to do’s at all.