What Happened When I Stopped Multitasking My Devotions

I used to read my Bible with a podcast humming in one ear and a half-finished cup of tea cooling beside the laptop. The screen held an open document, my phone buzzed with messages, and somewhere in the background a kettle whistled. I told myself this was faithfulness squeezed into a busy life. It looked spiritual from a distance, but up close it was barely a whisper.

Like many people across Brisbane and Melbourne, I had absorbed the gospel of productivity. If one task was good, two was better. If a few minutes opened up between meetings, surely I could fit a chapter of Scripture and a few emails into the same slot. The pace of work, family, and even church life seemed to reward that approach. The rewards, however, were thinner than I wanted to admit.

What finally pushed me to change was not a dramatic moment but a quiet one. I finished a familiar psalm and could not remember a single line. I had been reading, but I had not been met. That evening, sitting on the back verandah while the cicadas droned through the Adelaide Hills dusk, I sensed a gentle nudge to slow down, be present, and pay attention.

So I tried a small experiment. For one month I gave my devotional time the same kind of focus I gave a long lunch with a friend in North Sydney or a careful walk along the Yarra. No phone. No second screen. No rushing. The lessons that followed reshaped more than my mornings.

The Habit I Mistook for Holiness

Busyness wears a holy mask more easily than we realise. I convinced myself that cramming prayer between errands was devotion. In truth I was outsourcing my attention to a dozen small tasks and hoping God would slip into the cracks. The Bible never promises that fragmented attention will produce spiritual fruit. It asks for love, and love is undivided.

There was also something subtler at work. When I treated devotion as another checkbox on a crowded list, I subtly shifted the focus from receiving to performing. The morning reading became an obligation to clear rather than a window to gaze through. Recognising that difference was uncomfortable, because it meant my sincere habits had slowly drifted from grace into guilt.

The First Week of Paying Attention

The first morning felt strange. I sat at the kitchen table with no phone in sight, the radio off, and nothing in my hands but a notebook and a Bible. The kettle stayed cold. Outside, a magpie carolled from the gum tree and the neighbour's dog barked once and stopped. The silence had a texture I had forgotten existed.

I read slowly. I paused after every paragraph. I wrote down one sentence that stood out and asked the Lord what He wanted me to hear. It took twenty minutes instead of five. By the end of the week I had filled three pages with reflections, half-formed prayers, and small confessions. The time had not grown, only the depth.

What the Distractions Were Hiding

Without the constant buzz of input, uncomfortable feelings surfaced. I noticed how tired I actually was. I noticed resentment toward a colleague, worry about a friend in Perth, and a long-ignored grief over a family decision. These had been there all along, but the noise of multitasking had kept them politely below the surface.

That is also where I met God most clearly. The Lord does not usually shout over our busyness. He waits in the quiet, sometimes with a sentence, sometimes with a long stillness that asks nothing in return. Once the devices were put away, I began to recognise His voice again, much like hearing the ocean only when the wind finally drops at Bondi or Bells Beach.

Practices That Helped Me Stay Present

Several small disciplines anchored this new rhythm. I kept a simple chair in the corner of the lounge room and used only that seat for Scripture. I lit a candle at the start of each session, partly as a symbol and partly as a sensory cue to my body. I closed the laptop lid the night before so the morning began with intention rather than notifications.

I also learned to let the reading be slow. If a verse stirred something, I sat with it. If a prayer bubbled up mid-paragraph, I spoke it. If confusion arrived, I wrote a question in the margin rather than rushing past it. None of these were novel ideas, but together they wove a gentle structure that kept my attention anchored.

• Choose a single comfortable place for devotional reading
• Begin with two minutes of slow breathing before opening Scripture
• Keep a notebook within reach for one honest reflection
• Avoid screens for the first ten minutes of the session

The Fruit I Did Not Expect

The most surprising result was patience. I had assumed that prayer time was a separate compartment from the rest of life, but giving it real focus began to change how I drove through Sydney traffic, how I listened to my children at dinner, and how I sat with my wife over a flat white on a Saturday morning. The slowing rippled outward.

I also noticed a quieter kind of joy. There were mornings when nothing dramatic happened, no verse leapt off the page, no prayer felt powerful. Yet I left the chair more settled than I arrived. The discipline was not about extracting blessing, it was about remaining near the Father, the way a child stays near a parent simply to be close.

What This Means for a Hurried Culture

Australian life runs at a punishing speed. School drop-offs in Parramatta, shift work in the mines near Kalgoorlie, the long commute from the outer suburbs of Adelaide into the CBD, the constant ping of group chats about weekend sport and family plans. We have learned to slice our attention into thin strips and serve them to whoever shouts loudest.

Devotion was never meant to be sliced. Jesus withdrew from the crowds. He rose early. He went to lonely places. He gave His full attention to the Father and then to the people in front of Him. If the Son of God protected unhurried time with the Father, how much more do I need to do the same. Cutting the multitasking was less about technique and more about reverence.

Carrying This Forward Without Burning Out

I am not a model of disciplined prayer. I still forget, still drift back to the phone, still try to squeeze devotion into the gap between two video calls. The difference is that I notice now. I notice when the reading has become noise, when the prayer has become performance, when I have substituted motion for presence. That noticing is itself a gift of grace.

For anyone who senses their devotional life has grown thin, the path forward is rarely a new program or a longer checklist. It is usually the smaller, slower choice: one device put away, one place set apart, one quiet morning trusted to the Lord without demanding an immediate result. Over time that small faithfulness becomes the kind of soil where peace can finally grow.

• Begin with two minutes of stillness before any reading
• Choose one distraction to remove this week, not all at once
• Treat the devotional moment as a person, not a project
• End with a single sentence prayer before closing the Bible

A steady devotional life rarely begins with more knowledge. It begins with attention. The page, the breath, the silence, the Lord who waits there. Whatever else changes, that is the rhythm worth keeping.