Radical focus: Taking back the choice

A few weeks ago, I picked up my phone to do something specific. I don’t even remember exactly what it was. Maybe I needed to answer a message or look something up. Whatever it was, it should have taken a couple of minutes. A little while later, I realized I was doing something completely different. One thing led to another, and I had forgotten why I picked up the phone in the first place.

There was nothing dramatic about that moment. That was actually what bothered me. I had not made some terrible decision. I had barely made a decision at all. I have been thinking about that as we move from Rosh Hashanah toward Yom Kippur.

We usually think about teshuvah in terms of choices. What did I do wrong? What should I have done differently? What do I regret? What am I going to change? But maybe there is another question that comes first: How much of what I do am I actually choosing?

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Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, in Michtav MeEliyahu, develops his well-known idea of the nekudat habechirah, the point of choice. He compares a person’s moral life to two armies facing each other. Most of the territory is already controlled by one side or the other. The real fighting happens only at the front.

His point is that not every action in our lives feels like an active moral struggle. Some things have become second nature. Good habits can become automatic, and bad habits can too. The real point of choice is wherever the battle is actually taking place right now.

I think that is a very useful way to think about our relationship with technology. Obviously, the problem is not the phone itself. I use mine all day for things I need to do. We use our phones to work, learn, speak to family, do chesed, get directions, and stay connected. The problem is how easily using the phone stops being a decision.

You take it out to answer one message and before you know it you are checking three other things you never planned to check. You have a few empty seconds and your hand reaches for the phone almost before you have thought about it. The action has become automatic. In Rav Dessler’s terms, the behavior has moved away from the point of conscious choice. We stop asking ourselves whether we want to do it. We just do it.

So this Elul, I decided to try an experiment at my shul, Shaare Torah in Pittsburgh. We called it Radical Focus. Each day, we gave people one small challenge meant to make us a little more conscious of where we put our attention.

One day, the challenge was to notice the urge to check something unnecessary and wait four minutes before doing it. The point was not that you could never check it. After four minutes, you could. The idea was simply to create some space between the urge and the action. Another day, we did almost the opposite. We deliberately picked up our phones to use them for a mitzvah, whether to learn Torah, give tzedakah, arrange a chesed, or reach out to someone who needed encouragement. We also tried setting a timer before starting a quick task online, putting the phone away before bed, and eating a meal without it.

None of these challenges is dramatic. That is part of the point. Rav Dessler explains that as we make choices, the battle line can move. Something that once happened automatically can become something we notice and think about. And something that once required real effort can eventually become more natural. Our nekudat habechirah does not have to stay in the same place.

That feels especially relevant during the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah. On Yom Kippur, we will say Vidui again and again. We will think about choices we wish we had made differently. But maybe there is another question worth asking too: Where in my life have I stopped choosing?

Technology is an obvious example, but it is certainly not the only one. It could be how we react when we are frustrated, how quickly we speak about someone else, or even parts of our religious lives that have become so routine that we are no longer fully present. Sometimes the first step of teshuvah is not making a better choice. It is turning something back into a choice.

And that is why this work cannot end at Neilah. It is easier to be thoughtful during Elul and the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah. The harder test comes later, on an ordinary Tuesday in Cheshvan, when nothing in the calendar is pushing us to stop and think.

The goal of Radical Focus was never really to use our phones less. The phone was just a useful place to practice something much bigger: noticing the moment when impulse is about to turn into action, creating enough space to choose, and learning to do that not only before Yom Kippur, but all year. PJC

Rabbi Yitzi Genack is the rabbi of Shaare Torah Congregation. This column is a service of the Vaad Harabonim of Greater Pittsburgh.