One of my favorite authors, Richard Swenson, discusses the concept of “dysfunctional math, ” when he uses mathematics to demonstrate that humanity simply can’t keep up with the speed of progress.

Here are just a few of his examples:

• The average American is exposed to 10 hours of media per day and watches 34 hours of television per week.
• Go to college and you can choose from over 500 baccalaureate degrees.
• There are 55,000 configurations of coffee at Starbucks.
• In the next century, we will have a million times more technology than we do now.
• Knowledge workers check e-mail 50 times a day, instant messaging 77 times a day, and visit 40 websites per day.
• The average desk worker starts something new every 3 minutes.
• One third of us live with extreme stress and 48% believe it has increased over the past 5 years (2008).
• There was more change in the last century than in all of recorded history prior to 1900.
• There will be a thousand times more change in this century than the last.
• Apple offers 800,000 apps in its Apps Store, and 50 billion apps have been downloaded.
• There are 90,000 governmental bodies in the U.S.
• In 1800 there was just 1 city with a million people; now there are 381.
• The percentages of households in the U.S. that are married couple households: 1950–79%; 1960–74%; 1970–70%; 1980–61%; 1990–56%; 2000–52%; 2010–49.7%.

Cutting the Fat

The facts of the world we live in are listed above. While some people (perhaps the Amish and other likeminded orders) have fallen outside of this paradigm of dysfunction, the majority of us are being rushed along a rolling river and are in desperate need of a safety raft!

In an increasingly complex world that produces information at the speed of light, where should we stand? How should we as Christ-followers adapt to this overload? How can we set healthy and sustainable boundaries in our personal lives and our families that will ensure God-centered living and priorities?

These are all questions that I have pondered regularly the last several years. Our own family has increased from 2-6 people over the last seven years. We have had to adapt and find a “new normal” with each new addition. We have had to work together to find and keep healthy boundaries a priority.

3 Tips to Setting Healthy Boundaries

1) Prayerfully determine a personal and/or family mission statement. This doesn’t have to be a complex thing, but it will help you clearly focus and define your priorities in one sentence. Some great examples are here and here.

2) Evaluate Your Current Commitments – Write out everything you do. Everything. Make a list. Look at it for awhile. Pray about it. Put it aside. Look at it again. Ask yourself some questions such as:

~ Do these activities clearly reflect my mission?
~ Do these reflect my priorities, or what I would like my priorities to be?
~ Is there simply too much on this list? Not enough margin for rest, play, or Sabbath time?
~ Is there enough time for investing in important relationships with others?
~ Is spiritual growth reflected as a vital priority based on how I have chosen to invest my time?

These are some questions just to get your mind rolling. I am sure you can think of many more!

3) Make Necessary Changes and Implement! – Make a decision to cut the fat. Be okay with saying “No,” to social events, service requests, or other activities if you know that saying “Yes” will keep you from what you consider a vital priority.

If you tend to procrastinate necessary duties such as meal planning, grocery shopping, lawn maintenance that end up stressing you out later, put it on your calendar such as “Every Saturday morning I will take 30 minutes to meal plan for the week,” or something similar.

Take charge of your life and sow in the field that God has appointed to you. As the Scripture says, “Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else” (Galatians 6:4).

According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube.

The most disturbing stat to me in this report is that children ages 2-11 spend an average of 24 hours a week in front of the tube. That’s 1/7 of their whole week!

We are some of the weirdos out there who don’t have cable. Our exposure to T.V. is pretty much limited to an occasional family movie night over the weekend. So I would say our family averages 2 hours a week or less of time in front of the screen.

There are multiple reasons we have decided to limit our time in front of the tube. I think I could probably come up with 100, but 10 will have to suffice for the length of a blog post 🙂

10 Great Reasons to Turn Off the T.V.:

1. More Time with God – Most of us are busy people. We may find it difficult to see when we can make time for a personal and reflective devotional life. Here may be a simple solution: Give up T.V., movies, and/or social media and choose instead to invest that time in prayer, bible study, and personal worship.

2. More Time with People – I have been in homes where the television stayed on continually. Conversations would be interrupted, diverted, or non-existent due to the distraction of a T.V. screen.

When you turn off the set, you have time to really talk – to connect. To hear someone express their complete thoughts on a subject that is important to them. To play a game (yes, a board or card game or even just hide and seek) with your child.

People are more awesome than T.V. because they can love you back.

3. Less Wasted Time – I love this quote:

“Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos… two hours later your fingers are yellow and you’re no longer hungry, but you haven’t been nourished.” ~Clifford Stoll

It’s pretty much the same with T.V. I have often heard people lament “That is two hours of my life that I can never get back!”

4. Greater Contentment – Commercials are great at showing us everything we don’t have, making us hungry when we just finished a big dinner, and insisting that we “owe ourselves” some stupid item that is utterly forgettable.

In addition, sitcoms and movies can present unreal lives and views of romantic love (among other things) that can leave us discontent with the reality of our own lives. As Sally’s friend says to her in “Sleepless in Seattle,” “You don’t want to be in love! You want to be in love IN A MOVIE!”

5. Better Personal Health – I don’t have space to quote all the stats that prove how frequent T.V. watching promotes a sedentary lifestyle and contributes to health problems such as obesity, insomnia, and other major issues in our country. When you are “zoned out” in front of the screen, you can easily put away an entire bag of chips or a pint of ice cream without even noticing.

It’s also easy to get “lost” in a movie or show and stay up way too late, thus depriving you of much needed sleep that will leave you stumbling into your morning with less focus and energy.

6. More Time to Read – My whole family loves to read. I adore reading a wide variety of books – from classics to spiritual growth books to biographies or educational ones – they all leave my soul richer, wiser, and more thoughtful.

For many of you, there may be a whole list of books you have wanted to read but just “haven’t had the time.” Cut out T.V. and media and see how many of those books you can knock off your list!

7. Less Stress – How, might you say, will cutting out T.V. time also help eliminate some stress from your life? Well, the time you spend watching T.V. can divert you from things you really actually need to do – like fixing a broken faucet, cleaning the kitchen, or packing your kids lunches for the next day.

8. More Quiet Space and Solitude

“We all need empty hours in our lives or we will have no time to create or dream.” ~Robert Coles

Quiet time to just reflect, create, work on a hobby or project or goal you want to achieve is priceless. Embrace it and thrive.

9. To Be An Example to the Next Generation –

I’m going to go off on a little tangent here about kids watching T.V. because I have a bunch of them. Kids are amazingly creative individuals who have the capacity to create their own fun, use their minds, imagine, work with others, and accomplish great things…if we don’t dumb them down with excessive screen time.

When we expect our kids to need to be entertained by a t.v., tablet, ipod, or other electronic gadget, we are in essence saying to them that we don’t think they have the capacity to create their own fun.

When your kids observe your face buried in a book or working in your garden when you have free time, they are going to follow your example and do the same. However, if they see you turn on the T.V. or sit in front of the computer in every spare moment, they will do the same. It really is that simple.

10. To Live Your Life Instead of Watching Someone Else’s (Real or Fake One). Enough said.

What are some reasons you can come up with to give up T.V. or drastically reduce your screen time? I would love to hear from you! Let’s make the choice today to plug in to real life and turn off the television!