Multitasking kills leadership [cross-post]

March 11, 2011

Scott Benhase: Multitasking kills leadership

A few years ago researchers at Stanford investigated how college students multitasked. They assumed they did it much more effectively than older adults. The researchers expected to find highly toned cognitive abilities that allowed effective multitasking. What they actually found was that the more people multitasked, the worse at it they were. They were worse at identifying relevant information, more distractible, and more disorganized. They even became worse at what multitasking is supposed to help with: switching tasks seamlessly. Multitasking, they concluded, impairs one’s ability to think reflectively. Such reflection is about thinking long enough on a topic to weigh a number of ideas. That can’t be done in 30-second bytes while also updating a Facebook page, changing the playlist on an iPod, or watching the latest cute cat video on YouTube.

I think leadership in our churches suffers, if not from multitasking itself, certainly from the spirit of multitasking. Like Martha in Luke 10:41-42a (“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part.”), we become so distracted by the busyness of leadership that we do not make the time to think reflectively and prayerfully on our life and actions. It is not that we do not have the time. Of course we do. It is that we often lack the courage to live into such a direct, prayerful, and reflective relationship with God.

In her new book, “In Your Holy Spirit,” Michelle Heyne addresses the five traditional spiritual practices (Weekly Eucharist, Daily Prayer, Reflection, Community and Service). Her chapter on reflection is the one I found most valuable because it is the one practice we often neglect in our multitasked, Blackberried, and instant-messaged culture. Heyne challenges us to have the courage to live, act, and pray differently.

As leaders of the church, we need to step back, gain perspective, listen to others, and spend time in solitude so we can think reflectively and prayerfully. Such reflective time is a necessary precursor to right actions. We must be able to think and see clearly before we can lead and act faithfully. In Mark 8:23-25, we read, “Jesus laid hands on the blind man and asked: ‘Can you see anything?’ And the man looked up and said, ‘I can see people, but they look like trees walking.’ Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”

When we do not make the time for solitude so we can think reflectively and prayerfully, we often end up seeing “trees walking” and not the people, things, and circumstances of our lives that truly matter. Like with the blind man in the gospel, we need more time for Jesus to work on us, for the needed time to listen to the Holy Spirit in our daily prayers and in the prayers of our community. So, make the time for prayer and disciplined reflection on your life and leadership. It is not a luxury for when time allows. It is a necessity for which we must make time.

Scott Benhase is the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia.

Posted by Scott Benhase at 8:22 am

In Prayer

Remember You Will Die (It Helps You to be Alive) [Cross-Post]

Remember You Will Die (It Helps You to be Alive):

by Kent Annan

Just before the earthquake, Père, the grandfather of the Woshdlo family I first lived with in Haiti, pulled me aside to tell me about the latest project he was starting. As usual he was barefoot, in tattered slacks and a partly shredded button-down shirt that he wears for work in his fields.

He said he had been saving up to make a burial place — a small, traditional concrete tomb. The time was coming closer, he said, and he wanted to prepare for his death so the costs didn’t fall to his children.

When I was there after the earthquake, I saw the big, square hole in the ground (maybe ten feet by ten feet, and about six feet deep) about twenty paces from his home.

It reminded me of two snippets I heard and extrapolated about different monasteries:

At a secluded countryside monastery, every monk — as a ritual each morning — goes in the early dawn hours to the brothers’ cemetery. On arrival, each one grabs from the shed the rough wooden handle of a shovel. Then walks over to sink that shovel a single time into his own predesignated grave.

The first days it’s as though they’re not making a difference at all. A newly installed brother might get only a loose, light shovelful of grass and topsoil. The wind blows dirt and leaves to cover the first digs of mortality. But some weeks in, the faint form of a grave takes shape, a hole shaped for a body, for the digger’s body. But still only inches deep.

Eventually, decades into their life and work, senior monks (sometimes with the help of a younger brother) climb gingerly down a ladder into the grave and dump a shovelful of the dark, moist, heavy dirt into a bucket, which is then hoisted up the ladder before the monk slowly, rung by rung, emerges from the hole that he will one day descend into without coming back up.

One shovelful at a time, closer to death. One more shovelful alive.

More vocal and less physical (and less practical), at another monastery monks greet each other, whenever they pass and it is not an hour of silence, with the phrase, “Memento mori.” Remember you will die.

This instead of, “Hi. How are you?”

It serves the same purpose as the shovel. I’d find it less helpful as a ritual to reflect on life and death. But it might be a more effective spiritual discipline for living: Can you imagine how hard it would be on some days to not say “Memento mori” with secret satisfaction to a particularly annoying colleague?

Each Ash Wednesday, if you go to a church that does this sort of thing, a version of memento mori happens when you go to your knees and a cross of ashes is marked on your forehead as you hear the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”

The curse is on skin and bones, but so too comes the blessing.

This is an excerpt from After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken

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Kent Annan is author of the new book After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World is Shaken. He is co-director of Haiti Partners. He is also author of Following Jesus through the Eye of the Needle. (100% of the author proceeds from both books go to education in Haiti.)

Count the Costs [Cross-Post]

Mr. President, Please Count the Costs in Libya

by Aaron Taylor 03-11-2011

I’m glad I’m not the president right now. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be the commander and chief of the most powerful military in the world and have to grapple with a question as serious as “Should I use my power to establish a No-Fly zone over Libya?” Answer ‘no’ to the question and half the world accuses you of indifference. Answer ‘yes’ to the question and the other half will eventually get around to calling you an imperialist. The question of if, or when it’s ever appropriate to use violence to rescue the innocent is a troubling one. It’s the kind of moral dilemma that doesn’t lend itself to easy answers. While I don’t think that the Bible should be read as if it were a public policy manual, I do think it contains nuggets of wisdom that can guide us through our moral dilemmas, and sometimes those nuggets can be found in the most unlikely places: places like the Old Testament.

Rewind: Elisha is sick and ready to die. Joash is the King of Israel. The Syrian army is a growing threat to Israel’s security. Elisha tells Joash to take a bow and some arrows, open a window, and shoot, the arrows representing Elisha’s command to strike the Syrians at Aphekuntil he destroys them. Elisha then tells Joash to take the arrows and strike the ground. Joash strikes the ground three times … and Elisha is one ticked-off prophet. Why? Because according to Elisha, Joash should have struck five or six times; had he done that, then Joash would have been able to strike Syria until he destroyed it.From Elisha’s perspective, if you’re going to use force against an enemy, you should go all the way, not part of the way. The same holds true for Moses and Joshua who, at times, annihilated their enemies, sparing not even the women and the children, and for Samuel who had a thing or two to say to Saul for sparing King Agag. All of these men operated under the principle that if you’re going to use force against an enemy, you have to see it through,otherwise the enemy may come back to bite you.

Back to the present: President Obama and the American people have a decision to make. We can choose the path of violence and fly our fighter jets over Libyan soil, but if we do that, are we prepared to go all the way? What happens if our actions provoke an even more violent response from Gadaffi and he goes on an even greater killing spree than what he’s currently doing? Are we prepared to take it to the next level and invade another Muslim nation? Can we afford to do that while we’re gutting our social safety net at home to pay for our occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Even Jesus, the famous rabbi who said “Love your enemies” said if a king decides to go to war against another king, he should consider whether or not he has the resources to win (Luke 14:31). In other words, he (or she) should count the cost.

Mr. President, I wish I had an easy answer for you. I know there are a lot of people pushing you for a more robust response to the situation in Libya. That has to weigh on you. The only thing I can come up with is if you’re going to do it, then you have to commit to it … or don’t do it at all. Remember that violence almost always has unintended consequences.

Will you please count the cost?

Aaron D. Taylor is the author of Alone with A Jihadist: A Biblical Response to Holy War. To learn more about Aaron’s ministry, go towww.aarondtaylor.com. To follow Aaron on Twitter, go towww.twitter.com/aarondtaylor. Aaron can be contacted atfromdeathtolife@gmail.com.