It's All Good: 12 Devotions to Embrace Your NowSample

Free to Focus

Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. PROVERBS 4:25 ESV

Did you know your smartphone can make you dumb? That's the subtitle of an interesting article I ran across emphasizing the debilitating impacts multitasking has on our bodies. In it, neuroscientist Dan Levitan’s studies4 reveal that multitasking raises our levels of cortisol and adrenaline, leading to increased stress. His findings also showed how multitasking can drop a person’s IQ up to ten full points!

In our culture, multitasking is an enviable skill for achieving success, but we need to be aware of its true cost. The brain scans in Dr. Levitan’s research showed how multitasking processes information in a different part of the brain than where we store memories. This leads to memory loss as a lifestyle. Have you been forgetting more than you want to? Consider how much you multitask and whether you should reduce it. The study found that once these grooves get engrained, they become incredibly difficult to rewire. It makes the debilitating impact of multitasking a near-permanent disadvantage for anyone addicted to it.

Continual distraction prevents true presence. It lowers your ability to read a lengthy book, pray, carry on intimate conversations, focus on the beauty around you, study the Word, hear from God, and so many other things. To live a present life, you need to give yourself the freedom to focus. Remember in school when we used to have “hall passes”? These passes allowed us to go and do one thing. Imagine how a “life pass” could help you maximize your mental and emotional margin.

In Whittier, Alaska, a solitary tunnel connects the city with the rest of the state. This eleven-mile tunnel only has enough space to allow one form of transportation to go one way at a time. For example, the cars going out of the city must wait for the train coming into the city to exit first. Or, the cars coming into the city must wait for the cars going out of the city. It’s set up on a timetable. This structure enables everyone to get where they need to go. If everyone went through the tunnel whenever they wanted, there would be an inevitable crash—clogging up the passageway and making it unusable.

Living a present life respects your mind’s structure. Your mind has been designed by God for focus. Multitasking and engaging distractions clutter your brain’s neuropathways, causing your thoughts to become jumbled and leading to fatigue and brain fog. Honoring how God created you increases your ability to enjoy life and live out the purpose He has given you to enjoy.

Jesus, help me let go of distractions and unnecessary thoughts so I have clarity and an increased ability to enjoy life and live my purpose.