Cultivating Presence in a World Where Shortcuts, Time-Saving, and Quick Gratification Are God

Every action, even one intended to save time, has the potential to take something away from being present.

We live in a world that increasingly worships shortcuts, efficiency, time-saving, and instant gratification. The promise is that if we can do things faster and more easily, we will have more time to live.

But perhaps something has been overlooked.

The doing itself can compete with being.

Scrolling, clicking, searching, optimizing, talking, consuming information, even using wonderful technologies such as AI can keep us constantly engaged. We may save time while becoming less present in the time we have.

And yet, the problem is not technology. The deeper question is what we are doing with it.

Does this particular doing grow from presence, or replace it?

That question can be applied to almost everything in life.

I have an old question I remind myself of from time to time:

When I speak with someone, am I helping them enlarge their place of being present, or am I taking them away from it?

Perhaps we can ask the same question of ourselves.

When I use technology, does it help me become more present to the world, to another person, to myself, and to God? Or does it simply give me another thing to do?

Even this conversation raises that question. I could be driving and looking toward the horizon, allowing my mind to settle, or I could turn toward a device and start talking. Neither is automatically right or wrong. The question is what is happening to my presence.

Maybe the real measure of a time-saving device is not how much time it saves, but what happens to the presence within the time that remains.

And perhaps that is where we need to be careful when efficiency, convenience, and gratification become almost like gods.

Because a life can become extremely efficient at doing while gradually forgetting how to be.