day 1128: Distracted Living

"...I want you to do whatever will help you serve the Lord best, with as few distractions as possible."

As we are told and reminded over and over again, distracted driving is dangerous and can cause someone, ourselves included, to die.  Even when we know it though, that desire to be on top of everything  and current at all times can take over and there we are, texting or checking email at the stoplight or while the car is moving.  Driving takes focus as do many things in our work today.  But, competing with that focus are the instantaneous and compelling distractions of our phone, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, Apps, etc.  You could say that we live in the age of distracted living.  We know this in our businesses where it is nearly impossible to keep our consumer’s and customer’s attention beyond the briefest of moments.  Ask yourself when the last time you watched something that wasn’t live when you actually allowed the ads to play all the way through.  That would be the golden age of advertising that didn’t last.  We must understand, compensate and compete vigorously against the distractions if we want to build and grow brand loyalty.

Our spiritual lives are on a constant barrage of distractions!  The devil dangles all he has in front of us all the world has to keep us distracted and less engaged with God. Sometimes it is like Satan has the DVR controller and he just fast forwards us from Sunday to Sunday and loves that we didn’t see, hear or feel anything of God for the whole week. Think about it that way and it gives a whole meaning to the term “controller”.  As we know, our workplaces are the perfect place for distraction as well.  One hour to the next is filled with something or someone who shifts us off course, sometimes slightly and sometimes horribly.  Our challenge today is not to be distracted and to fix ourselves on Him today.  Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t perfect.  Like the scientist trains hid mind or the athlete trains her body, we have to train ourselves to have resolve, commitment and unwavering focus on what really matters; bringing glory to Him!

Reference: 1 Corinthians 7:35 (New Living Translation)

day 843: There Should Be An App For This - 2012

"Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does."


I am off this morning to South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) in Austin, TX. This interactive festival has established itself as the premier launching pad of interactive technology start-ups so we will see what will come out of this year. With that said, it made sense for me to revise something from 2011 for today.


"There should be an 'App' for this." Thirty six months ago, this was becoming a popular saying as people played with their iphones and thought about their soon to arrive ipads. three years later, as we have our ipad 1 & 2 and wait on our ipad 3 and we have upgraded our iphones to newest generation, we say less often, "there should be an App for this" because today, there seems to be just about an "App" for everything so we say more often, "there is an App for that." In actuality, it's probably about a few hundred thousand Apps that have been created for the Apple platform and then a fraction of that many for the Android operating system. Still, it now seems that there is an App for about anything, other than some of the more mundane things we may still do at work. But, watch out, those are coming soon. It may well be soon that an ipad for work becomes standard issue. As all of these innovations continue to occur it is important that we stay on top of what is new and that we understand what is coming next. To be most competitive in our field or industry, we have to be ahead of the competition and in touch with the next generation of talent that walks through our doors. To not be in touch with the future is to live in the past. There is no App for telling and understanding the future. That is on us to do.

An App is also a publishing tool that allows a developer and innovator to share his/her creation across the users of a platform and spread this software virally through sharing it with their social graph. Technology is the tool for evangelizing a resource, tool, service, etc. If you think about it, God was ultimately the first App developer in that He created all of us to be the spreaders of His Good News. We are God's Apps and as we are told in in 1 Chronicles, we are to be the publishers of his glory. Think about this today and know that God is looking at us and saying in all of the situations that we are given and face, "Here is my app for this."


Reference: 1 Chronicles 16:24 (New Living Testament)

day 646: "There Should Be An App For This"

"Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does."


"There should be an 'App' for this." Twenty four months ago, this was becoming a popular saying as people played with their iphones and thought about their soon to arrive ipads. Two years later, as we have our ipads and wait on our ipad 2 and we have upgraded our iphones to newest generation, we say less often, "there should be an App for this" because today, there seems to be just about an "App" for everything so we say more often, "there is an App for that." In actuality, it's probably about a few hundred thousand Apps that have been created for the Apple platform and then a fraction of that many for the Android operating system. Still, it now seems that there is an App for about anything, other than some of the more mundane things we may still do at work. But, watch out, those are coming soon. It may well be soon that an ipad for work becomes standard issue. As all of these innovations continue to occur it is important that we stay on top of what is new and that we understand what is coming next. To be most competitive in our field or industry, we have to be ahead of the competition and in touch with the next generation of talent that walks through our doors. To not be in touch with the future is to live in the past. There is no App for telling and understanding the future. That is on us to do.

An App is also a publishing tool that allows a developer and innovator to share his/her creation across the users of a platform and spread this software virally through sharing it with their social graph. Technology is the tool for evangelizing a resource, tool, service, etc. If you think about it, God was ultimately the first App developer in that He created all of us to be the spreaders of His Good News. We are God's Apps and as we are told in in 1 Chroncicles, we are to be the publishers of his glory. Think about this today and know that God is looking at us and saying in all of the situations that we are given and face, "Here is my app for this."


Reference: 1 Chronicles 16:24 (New Living Testament)