Cultivating It

As I sat around our fire pit last night with my wife, kids and some great neighbors handing out candy to Dora the Explorer  and various characters from Toy Story,  I was fighting an inner compulsion to share what a great time we were having with all my Twitter and Facebok friends while we were having that great time.

Here’s a sad, but ironic picture: while posting a picture, sending a text or sharing a tweet about great conversations and laughter we are enjoying, I’m only grabbing bits and pieces of continuing conversations, jokes or stories. After “liking” someone else’s fire pit photo, I ask “Sorry, what was that? I didn’t hear what Jimmy said.” As I listen to my buddy tell an insightful story about how he grew up, I’m mentally processing about how “blessed” everyone else would be to hear that story and I totally miss what he was actually trying to communicate. While my daughter is roasting marshmallows and letting them fall into the fire pit, I’m thinking “I need to grab a picture of that so I can share it with my friends back home” instead of immersing myself totally in what is happening right before my own eyes and ears and enjoying the look in my daughter’s eyes as she loses yet another marshmallow to a fiery inferno. While packing everything up, I’m thinking about the various blurbs I can share on Facebook  and what a great night we had, rather than reflecting on the smiles of all those kids as we loaded them up with real candy bars and caused their bags to overflow with more candy than the dentist would ever allow.

In my effort to be social with twenty other people who are not physically with me, I’m emotionally disengaging from the people I’m actually with. How sad is that?

I wonder how more deeply connected I would be with those around me if I viewed my social network spiritually and physically rather than virtually?

I have a love / hate relationship with reading. I love books, but I rarely finish them. I don’t exactly know why, except that I do know I get distracted easily. I also like to “get to the point” and end up frustrated with authors who take forever to say “Jesus loves us and He died for our sins”. I don’t need to read a doctoral thesis to understand that. So, I tend to skim rather than read, and I end up missing most of the beauty the author was trying to sketch out for me.

Recognizing what I’ve been missing out on, I’ve been making an earnest effort to change those habits. Here are some things I’m doing to cultivate a love for reading:

• I really like eBooks. I like having easy access to any of my books wherever I am or the ability to buy a book at-will. eBooks have helped lure me back to the written word.
• I love the iPad and I’ve been a huge fan of the Kindle app for the iPad. However, I’ve found that the iPad is not conducive to “getting lost in a story”. There are too many temptations to flip over to my email app, browse the tech news, check my twitter feeds, etc. It doesn’t take too long after beginning a chapter that I find my mind beginning to wander.
• I’ve recently switched to a dedicated eBook reader – the Amazon Kindle 3. I like the single-focus aspect of a dedicated eBook reader. No bleeps, no twitter, no browser – just regular old reading.
• On Saturday’s or Sunday’s, I like to go outside and read. Due to the heat and the screen glare, the iPad is horrible for that. The Kindle, however, is perfect for that.
• I’ve never been good about looking up references the author includes inline, and I’ve been poorer as a result. I’ve found that when I take the time to look up a verse that the author references, it really enhances what I’m reading / studying and the Lord often shows me something totally new as a result.
• I don’t read well when there is too much going on around me. I do my best reading and studying early in the morning (like 4 am) or late at night. A cup of coffee and a comfy recliner at 4 am is where I long to be these days.
• I’ve tried audio books, but I just don’t retain the information like I do when I’m reading. Occasionally I’ll listen to an audio book while riding a bike or running, but I’ve really come to appreciate the silence of those activities more. That said, I’ve found the gym to be the perfect place to catch up on reading. A book is a great way to keep your eyes from visible “distractions” that are wondering the gym floor or on the TV.
• Most of the books I read are non-fiction: theology, writing, mercy ministry, stream-of-thought, etc. I wouldn’t mind reading fiction books by people who happen to be Christians, I just don’t want to read Christian fiction. I’ve heard it said that the worst place in Christendom is the Christian Book Store, and I believe that isn’t too far from the truth.
• When reading a chapter, I’m being intentional about not skipping paragraphs. In fact, I’m forcing myself to go back and re-read paragraphs to make sure I understand what the author is trying to communicate. I’m also going back and re-reading entire chapters. By doing those things, I find myself getting into the author’s world more frequently.
• Note-taking while reading is a skill I’m just now beginning to develop. Keeping some small moleskine notebooks around helps a lot.

Managing time and tasks while being mobile can be extremely difficult. Phone calls come in, emails get exchanged, commitments get made, and tasks have been worked on. As the brain begins to unwind on the way home, reality hits and the heart palpitations begin to go off: I just gave my life away and I have no idea who I gave it to and what I’m supposed to be doing.

How do you track these things while living mobile? It is a problem I’ve been working through for many years. I’m not sure I’ve completely solved it, but I’m making progress.

Here are some tools I use:

• toodledo.com – it is a web-based service that collects to-do’s organized by folder. Tasks can be emailed in, they can be created using a browser-plugin, and they have an iPhone / iPad.
• Pocket Informant – they have an iPhone and iPad app that integrates into the toodledo platform and Google’s calendar for a complete overview of your appointments and tasks.
• Evernote.com – access to all your notes from wherever you are and on whatever mobile device you happen to be working on. They have apps for every platform out there: mac, pc, ipad, iphone, android, blackberry and web
• Google’s Gmail / Google Apps for Domains – access to my email from wherever I am and from whatever device I’m working on

Here are some ways I use the above services:

• email comes that I need to create a task for: I forward it on to my Toodledo email address and it creates a task using a date and folder name I specify in the subject line
• I’m on the phone and need to create a task: I click a Toodledo Create Task button in my browser and I’m done
• I need to record time spent on a task – I set it in the length field for the task in Toodledo
• I’m on my iPad and need to access those same tasks: I open up PocketInformant, it syncs all my tasks, and there they are
• I’m reading an email and I only need a portion of that email for task creation purposes: select the sentence, right click it and choose Toodleo This
• I’m meeting with a client and using my iPad to append some notes to a client folder. I open up Evernote, access the client notebook and begin taking notes. I’m already online, so when I close the app, the note gets synced and is available to me to read my notebook when I get back to the office or from my phone if I find myself stuck in traffic.
• Email comes in that I need to follow-up on later in the day or tomorrow: star it using gmail.
• Email comes with attachments that I need to access later while offline – I forward it to my Evernote email address so I can access it through Evernote on whatever device, while either offline or online
• Before the day gets going, I’ll review all my emails that are starred, follow-up and archive, or forward to my Toodledo email address to create a task.

What do you do, why do you do it, and how do you do it?

Merriam-Webster defines cultivate as: