Chris Brogan said in a recent webinar that we have become a nation of skimmers. He was talking about email marketing and how your email subject line has to capture the attention of the receiver enough so that they open the email and then the first couple of lines have to capture their attention on love so that they actually read the rest of the email.
I agree but I wonder what that is doing to us.
If you don't dig a little bit deeper or look past somebody's poor attempt to communicate you could miss working with somebody that is awesome but is not refined. You could easily get duped into going with the strong, the fast, the beautiful, the one that is most in tune with you and the way you think. And while those are all things that we should look for in capturing all that the thing that I keep hearing preached at us by society as diversity and our differences are what make us stronger.
I also wonder about how that does with our relationship with God. God uses the we, the broken, the ones that are just a little off, people that are not quite perfect in the eyes of those around them but are made perfect when he touches them. And so if we rush by and go with that thing that is just right or skim and miss the slower person do we miss out on someone that God is using to accomplish really great things?
I guess I long for the depth. My wife and I are in this phase where we are reading devotionals in the Bible. There quick and tiny bites of thought and then a couple of verses to think through something over the course of 5 to 10 days. I can't say that I remember any of them distinctly. I remember the vibe and the feeling in the small sense of accomplishment and who I'm a practicing Christian now rather than just a person that says I'm a Christian. But this skimming, especially of God's word, doesn't really seem to get me into the place where I need to be.
I've made it a priority to listen to a chapter of the book of Proverbs every day. That's worked out well for about four months. I listened to the chapter for whatever day of the month it is. The other day I was listening to it out loud and my wife wanted to know why was listening to information about wars. When I told her it was the Bible she didn't believe me.
But it is actually helping me because I continue to think about Proverbs as I go through my day-to-day life. And I am applying what I'm learning is this stuff passes through my head and through my ears and through my eyes. And it does seem to be helping.
So I guess the skimming and constant ingestion of Proverbs is helping me in the long run.
I want to be known as a skimmer. I don't want to be known as someone who stays on the surface. So many people that I know. But how are you as their cursory greeting and they don't really mean it nor do they care how I am they just say it out of habit. I'm trying to change from doing that myself to asking something different when I greet people or just greet them. But it's funny the reaction that I get because they look at me as if something is missing. It's almost as if skimming shows that you care and in some ways and to some people.
Yeah, I saw your email but I didn't read the whole thing is a common answer I get. And so I don't send long emails and I tend to pair them down to make them more appetizing and appealing to whoever I'm sending information to.
I just think that all this skimming, while beneficial in the short run, could turn us into a bunch of people that really don't care. Or are perceived to not care.
