In the summer of 2023, I spent dozens of hours sitting at my father’s bedside. 

At the time, Dad was 87 years old and in the late stages of Parkinson’s Disease. His mind was still sharp, filled with wisdom gleaned from decades of navigating life’s challenges, not to mention reading hundreds of books on history, economics, theology, and the Bible. But in many ways, his world had become very small. He struggled to speak above a whisper, and he couldn’t answer a phone call anymore, much less read a book or write a letter.

Dad didn’t have much time left, and his ability to give his full attention to anything was limited. What became abundantly clear, under these awful circumstances, was what was most important to him: his children and grandchildren, the friends he had known for years, the people who cared for him and for whom he cared.

With whatever time and attention he had to give, Dad wanted his loved ones to know how he felt, and he wanted to hear from them in any way possible. My wife and I had some people leave messages on his voicemail that we played while we sat with him. We had others send notes that we read to him, often through our own sniffles and tears.

Dad also wanted to talk about big questions—about the meaning he had found in his life and the questions he had never fully resolved. He asked me to read him his favorite poems and psalms. He asked me if I thought he had done enough. 

I did. 

He had.

It was a terrible time—yet intermittently peaceful, humorous, and even weirdly enjoyable. We retold old stories, laughed at past mistakes and lucky breaks, remembered old friends and long-lost relations. There was nothing to do but sit and share. So we sat and shared. 

Meanwhile, in a different part of my life, the emails, voicemails, and Teams messages piled ever higher. My coworkers wanted me to read this or to weigh in on that. They marked me as “required” for a multitude of meetings. They asked for my input, my permission, my advice, my words.

They weren’t doing anything wrong. They were just doing what we all do these days, trying to move the work forward using the multitude of communication channels we have available: Teams, email, text, voicemail, etc. Only a few of them knew that, due to my Dad’s limitations, my time and attention had been stretched extra thin.

What they might have realized—what we all should realize these days, even if we aren’t facing end-of-life moments—is that we’re all being stretched extra thin. 

Sitting with Dad and seeing the world through the lens of shortened, magnified time, I became acutely aware that we live in an era of perpetual interruption, a world in which the notifications and nudges never cease.

They come at all hours and in all circumstances, via rings, beeps, buzzes, and vibrations. They aren’t ordered by actual importance or organized by substance. They are streams of discontinuity.

At one point, as I sat beside my dying father reading his favorite psalm, my ride-share service sent me a text message asking for permission to email me coupons.

Never in history have humans faced such an assault on our attention. Never have we been so constantly interrupted.

We need to do more, both individually and collectively, to stop it. I don’t just mean we need to limit screen time. Yes, we need to shut down our computers and turn off our phones regularly. But we also need to reestablish social norms that make it acceptable—even preferable—to spend significant hours being gloriously unavailable.

We need to normalize being out of touch for parts of every day, week, month, and year. We need to scorn being “always on” and celebrate being “regularly off.”

Why? Because the risks of perpetual distraction are significant. We risk losing:

• The ability to be fully present—for the good, the bad, and even the good in the bad.
• The skill and energy it takes to give someone your full and undivided attention—and the joy of receiving such attention in return.
• The capacity to form deep human connections, which have never once emerged from multitasking.
• The ability to sit in silence and reflect deeply, to notice things that lie below the surface, to unlock the sort of wisdom that emerges only slowly and from careful, repeated reflection.

We risk losing a bunch of the stuff that makes us better humans. The stuff that makes our lives more meaningful. The stuff Dad was always good at.

And for what? 

Even as Dad’s ability to keep up diminished, his focus on what was most important increased. There’s a lesson in that for all of us: Slowing down reduces our attention in one way but intensifies it in another. Fewer contacts can be deeper ones. Simpler, slower interactions can be more meaningful ones.

Something parallel happened to me at work: When my capacity to join every meeting, review every document, and reply to every email disappeared, the important stuff still got done. Other people stepped in to help with the less important stuff. And some stuff (more than I would have thought) was suddenly exposed as unnecessary. 

My email response time slowed, and it didn’t matter. The busywork disappeared. The blooming, buzzing confusion of life was ever-so-slightly diminished, and everyone carried on.  

Increasingly, the digital world is designed to fragment and monetize our attention. Increasingly, our businesses and institutions seem hellbent on operating in digital time and spaces, even when they don’t really need to. The risks to our health and sanity become clearer by the day: Burnout soars while productivity flattens. Mental health declines as disinformation reigns. No one has a moment to stop and think.

Two years ago this week, Dad died. 

Not long after that, I left my job, started a new business, and went back to writing every day. 

I haven’t entirely escaped the world of digital distraction, and I don’t intend to. Parts of it are useful. Other parts of it are fun. But I’m learning how to keep it in its place.

Most importantly, when it stops working for me, I turn it off. 

I go outside and play with my dogs. I read a book on the back porch while the birds chirp. I drink a cup of coffee and listen to music with my wife. I call my daughters up just to say “hi!” 

I think of Dad and write a message like this one, in hopes that it will reach someone else and bring them peace.

Not to interrupt but to close a rupture. To sit and share.