Taking Time to Ponder

Of course this post must start with the phrase “I was thinking recently about taking time to think”.  Many of our written words quite naturally come from the thoughts and observations we have about ourselves and our daily lives.  But in all actuality, this post comes from the thought about my own overwhelming data obsession.  

My personal observation is that I am without question obsessed with data.  I am not alone in this obsession.  When talking to a close friend yesterday about the weather her comment to me was that she did not have access to “good meteorological data”.  As I watch the habits of my family I notice how in mid conversation we go searching for data.  While talking to one of my sons about a new digital device that tracks our levels of activity during the day (a whole different gadget obsession I have) I noticed that within seconds of our conversation he was pulling up the device on his iPhone, and watching a video about the device.  This was an instantaneous response and of course while doing this he was still talking with me and at the same time consuming data.  

This week I read about the price increase from AT&T for new data plans.  The price increase while talked about in absolute numbers being around $5.00 is really a 25% increase in their price for a data plan.  While I have a grandfathered data plan from said provider and as a result did not really consider this much, it points out to me that for the most part we are so obsessed with data that I doubt that there will be little hue and cry over this hefty price increase.  After all, we need our data!  

I write this from my home office on a day when there is snow on the ground, and I have no appointments.  My children are at school and my spouse is otherwise preoccupied somewhere in our home far from my office.  I have what we might call a moment of peace and quiet.  We all seek these moments.  Yet in my office there are three laptop computers, my iPad, my iPhone, my television and radio, and of course my BlackBerry.  Stop shaking your head I already admitted my data obsession.  But the real point is that in order to write this I had to shut down everything except my Mac.  I wanted time to ponder this idea without interruption.  I wanted space from the data for just enough time to really think this idea through.  What is interesting as I write is that I found myself needing data even in the middle of this piece as I wanted to be sure of my usage of the term “hue and cry” above and so I did a quick Google search on my second screen.  I laughed out loud at myself right after I did that.

Pondering an idea for me means to write out my thoughts to explore what I am thinking about a thing.  This is the way I think and has been the way I have thought for many years.  When I was much younger I would do this with a notepad in front of me or at least a piece of paper.  I have found myself in restaurants alone doing this on a napkin and I can even recall the number of times I thought thorough an idea with friends while writing something down.  I ponder on paper (or at least the electronic equivalent).  But something very interesting happens when I remove myself from the data and actually ponder an idea.  I realize that I have real thoughts.  Lots of them in fact and they flow out quickly and in a fairly coherent fashion.  I have to fight off the temptation to go off on a tangent from time to time but I find that with just a bit of quiet focus I can really think.  It feels good.  It feels rewarding.

I find that I have a tendency to worry, project into the future or be regretful about a prior thought word or action.  If I really think about it much of what I call thinking has really been one of these.  I call these stories.  I will tell myself all kinds of stories if I am not careful.  But this form of thinking, this pondering, is quite different.  It is just focused on the subject at hand.  It is about doing something vastly different and arriving at a conclusion or a sense of direction.  It is fun. 

In our very busy world filled with so much data, so much information, and so many interruptions, pondering will be difficult at best.  But I highly recommend it to anyone that just needs to take time away from the crowd, and escape the data for a few moments.  Try disconnecting and just ponder.  I am making a list.  There are a number of things now that I want to ponder in the coming days.  I can only wonder how many of those will be translated to a post here.

UBU