Personal Quarantine Progress Report

Zach Mabry |
April 17, 2020

Okay, so we’ve been quarantined for a while now, staying put and social distancing. But how are we doing? When this first hit, many of us saw that our schedules had opened up drastically and decided to not waste the time and do something productive, but has that happened?

Our desire is to be faithful to the Lord in everything, and to faithfully apply passages of Scripture like Ephesians 5:15-16 (CSB):

“Pay careful attention, then, to how you live—not as unwise people but as wise—making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”

Let’s take some time and evaluate how we are doing: celebrate our successes and correct our shortcomings. The goal is not to establish hard and fast rules and limits (although you may need that). We need to get a perspective on what we are doing with our time. Right now we all have more free time than we will ever have… ever… for the rest of our lives.

Let’s take our time and Christian commitment seriously.

I’ve put together a checklist to help itemize how I’m doing. The first half is taken from the “Screen Time” tool on my iPhone (I’m sure other smartphones have something similar). You don’t need to record the time in the chart if you don’t want to, you could just make a note with a “+” or “-” to challenge yourself to do this more or less. The second section is just an estimate of other devices. You should look at your “watch list” or “recently watched” sections of whatever streaming service you use.

The last section has to do more with overtly positive uses of your time. Again, let’s not be legalistic about this like, “I have to pray for 25 minutes every day to be a good Christian,” but let’s take our time and Christian commitment seriously.

For example, if you were to watch all the Marvel movies it would take you 50 hours and 3 minutes, but to read the New Testament would take 18 hours and 20 minutes for the average reader.

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Download the Progress Report (PDF) 

As you work through this, here are some obvious red flags:

  • If you are embarrassed to show someone the “screen time” on your phone, then you need to do something differently
  • If you are ashamed of the “history” of your internet browser, you need to repent and get accountability
  • If you are shocked by how much you are on your phone, then you should have intentional times without it
  • If you are asked the question, “What are you learning?” and you can’t think of the last time you learned something… there might be a problem

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