Glen Guyton is the Chief Operations Officer for Mennonite Church USA and Director of Convention Planning
By Glen Guyton
Okay, what have you done this week to reach your dreams? I hope you did more than just sleep and I hope you did more than waste time trying to figure out how to get started. Just go do something my friends. Time is very short and you need to be thankful for each day.
Ecclesiastes 3:9-13 says: What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of humanity are to be occupied. God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also God has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives, and also that every person should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor—it is the gift of God.
Think about the above scripture as you toil in your day to day job. All I can say is, “Don’t worry, be happy and don’t let the overabundance of media and technology overwhelm you or distract you.”
We live in the information age. The knowledge we have access to is infinite. We can “google” anything from “how to rotisserie a chicken” to “how to start a revolution.” But do we really need to be as connected as we are? Does information overload, help us, or hurt us? Really was your great-great grandfather any less happy because he couldn’t use Google Earth to see pictures of a stranger’s house in Turkey? Here is what a Nobel prize winner said about information:
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
-Herbert Simon, recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
Much like the sensory overload experienced by an autistic child, our wealth of access can shackle us. We become jacks-of-all-information and masters of nothing. We read T-Mail and Mennonite World Review as soon as it is released to get the latest and greatest from the Anabaptist grapevine. Some of us cannot wait to share our wise opinions online for the world to see. We try to globalize our lives rather than localize our purpose. Instead of dedicating ourselves to a few noble causes, we try to broadcast ourselves to the virtual world.
Facebook, Blogger, MySpace, LinkedIn, Photobucket… Bill Gates only knows what else there is to take up our time. Husbands and wives don’t talk, but they text and email. Kids socialize with friends by standing a few feet away from each other, using their cell phone or wireless gaming systems. It seems that the technology that was supposed to make our lives simpler has begun to steal our creativity and our ability to live out our dreams.
Limit the information in your life. Get off the grid just a little bit and see what possibilities it opens up for you. See if less time on social media gives you more time to reach out to your real life friends or at least allows you to spend an extra 30 making your dreams a reality.
P.S. Sorry for wasting your time with this blog post. Just think what you could have done before these words filled your mind!