By One of the blessings and curses of living by yourself is there is a great deal of time for self-reflection…and for stupid games on your iPad. Both activities are by choice, so I do get pretty mad at myself when I find myself doing either for long stretches of time.
Self-reflection in and of itself is not a bad thing. It’s important to know who you are – your strengths and weaknesses, your triggers, what makes you happy, what you can improve on. But there was something in the sermon a few weeks back that got me to thinking. Self-reflection is focus on the individual. Is it possible to instead direct more of that energy toward God? Wouldn’t your life be better? It’s not that you shouldn’t seek to improve yourself. Think of your time every day as a lovely pie (mmmm….pumpkin pie or strawberry pie). How is your time pie consumed?
Take a look at your screen time on your phone. According to ‘What’s the big data’, every day an Average American spends around 7 hours and 4 minutes in front of their screen. Take a moment and read the lyrics beautifully expressed in Rent’s Seasons of Love
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes
Five hundred, twenty five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
If you’re an average American, you’re spending 154,760 minutes each year on screen. Let’s presume we’re all healthy and get 8 hours of sleep each day (175,200 minutes). Now you’re down to 16 hours each day…350,400 (or since we are in March 288,960 minutes) each year…do you really want over 30% of your minutes each day to be spent staring at a screen. Or 44% of your waking time? The takeaway for me is to be more intentional with how your time is spent. And to intentionally walk away from the laptop, iPad, iPhone and get outside and connect. I’m too late to make this a new year’s resolution or even a Lenten sacrifice. But maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to tie to a specific event in the year. Maybe recognizing it now is enough of a step forward?
I’ve set time limits on specific apps but now I am going to take it a step further.
I hope you do too!