Freeform Friday 22 - Shower Thinking

These days I’m doing a lot of thinking. I have two blogs to update, sermons to write and preaching series to develop. While I enjoy these activities, they do require a lot of focused thinking. The truth is that I don’t have as much time as I would like for focused thinking; I wish I had a dark room with comfy chairs in which I could sit and ideate. Unfortunately I have no such room and I have to squeeze my focused thinking in when I can.

So I do my focused thinking in the shower.

Some people cringe when I talk about the practice of shower thinking. For them it seems a little too personal to talk about what happens behind the shower curtain. If we can get away from that side of showering, though, we can easily see that there are few times better suited for focused thinking.

You’re alone.

There are few distractions.

It happens every day.

In our busy lives, we often don’t have a daily scenario in which we’re alone and free from distractions. Showering provides that daily scenario and we should use it as such. We shouldn’t see showering as just an opportunity to get clean and allow the hot water to wake us up; we should see showering as the environment for our most focused thinking of the day.

In the shower I don’t have my phone, I can’t check my email and there’s no television or radio to derail my thoughts. The only tasks at hand are shampooing and loofa’ing, which do not take too much mental effort. Since the task of showering is so mindless, it frees me up to think about an upcoming sermon or blog post. It also provides a quiet moment that God can use to speak to us.

Since we hopefully shower every day, we should view those 10-15 minutes as more than just a necessary task. Showering can provide the much needed opportunity for all of us to spend some time in focused thought, whether that’s prepping for a sermon, planning out some goals or preparing for a party. Just don’t get shampoo in your eyes.

What other situations provide you time for focused thinking?