The fast-forward button; or how I stopped fretting and learned to love my laundry
The brilliant YouTuber Ali Abdaal recently introduced me to the concept of the fast-forward button. Well actually, I’ve been aware of the idea and have thought about it on and off for a couple of decades. But I’d never really thought of it as an actual fast-forward button. His simple and recognizable metaphor crystallized it for me. I started thinking about it in my daily life. It was no longer abstract and philosophical; instead, it was something I could apply day-to-day.
What is this fast-forward button that Ali introduced me to? It’s a souped-up version of the skip forward button on YouTube or Spotify. If you press it, it skips you forward a certain distance in time. The fast-forward button has the ability to skip your life forward to the end of the activity that you’re involved in. This is particularly useful in situations where you are being tortured for information by a hostile government, for example. More prosaically, if you’re in the middle of a particularly horrendous shift at work, you can fast forward to the end of it, still collect your pay, but not have to put up with all the mindless drudgery. What a brilliant invention the fast-forward button is. You get to skip to the end of all the bad bits, yet still reap the rewards of your imaginary efforts.
Unsurprisingly, ever since I learned of it, I’ve been looking for ways that I could profitably put it to use. One sultry Saturday afternoon I found myself folding a large basket of my recently cleaned laundry. Now if there is one thing I detest, it is doing my laundry. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy clean pair of underwear as much as the next guy, I just dislike the process of getting there. So there I was, one sock, two socks, slip them into each other, next. Pick up the shirt, shake it out, find the corners, shake it out, fold the arms in, fold it in half, smooth it out, and stack it on the rest. As I moved through the large pile of unprocessed cotton, the thought of the fast-forward button struck me like a bolt! There it was, its glistening surface beckoning me like so many seductive sirens. I immediately reached for it, but before I could press its tempting smoothness, some invisible force stayed my hand.
As I considered the deed, I started to wonder. Did I really want to miss this warm afternoon? Did I want to miss the sunlight streaming through the previously unnoticed dust motes dancing like so many magical faeries? Did I really want to miss the sounds of my kids twinkling in the background as they floated through their own lives in another part of the house? Did I really want to miss the thoughts that were careening through my brain like so many ping-pong balls? I didn’t want to miss any of those things. Instead, I realized that folding my laundry really wasn’t so bad after all if it meant I got to do so many other great things at the same time. It turned out to be an exceptionally pleasant 15 minutes of life.
The fast-forward button didn’t end up allowing me to skip past the painful experience of some present reality, but it did rescue me from it, by teaching me that, how I chose to experience my present was largely just that, a choice.
Where would you use a fast-forward button in your own life? Next time you find yourself in one of those situations, I challenge you to be present in your experience and ask yourself if you would genuinely choose to give up that bit of your life to avoid whatever discomfort the fast-forward button would save you. If your answer is still yes, this part of your life is a great candidate for something you might want to think about how you can change.
Go check out Ali’s video where he talks about the Fast Forward Button here: