Every day we are faced with innumerable distractions, multi-tasking like crazy, a condition that has been called "continuous partial attention." In fact, as I write this , I am attempting to listen to a podcast interview of a colleague in Colorado and have the emergency scanner running on open channel to monitor the holiday weekend traffic.
My colleague is discussing his run for city council in his hometown, and what he learned from the experience. Although unsuccessful, he found that it was an excellent way to build relationships throughout the community. He is saying that he no longer uses the term politician, but rather elected officials, to refer to those who have been elected to serve all of us. The scanner says one of the occupants of the vehicle that just got pulled over has a felony warrant, or maybe it wasn't a warrant, I didn't catch all of it. Ah, the e-mail is dinging at me, tempting me to check the new message, probably junk mail, but you never know, so better go look . . . . now what was that on the podcast again?
Oh yes, building relationships. It takes focus to build a relationship, and focus is in precious short supply. We all need to shift into campaign mode more often, holding a single minded focus on one objective or one person or one task at a time. The podcast is over, the scanner is off, the e-mail can wait and its time to close the day the same way I started it - relationship time with God. Time to focus.
