I didn’t even recognize myself in that moment.
Tapping all over my phone screen searching frantically as if my life depended on it.
After exhausting all the visible icons, I thought there might be a secret spot of the screen I could tap to change the playback speed. I mean, it’s YouTube after all. I can adjust the speed of any regular video, so why not YouTube Shorts?! Ughhhhh.
Not only did I not find some secret way to speed up a Short, I completely missed what was being said in the video AND I’m cranky.
Oh, and you know the saying about insanity? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Um, yeah, this was not the first time I crashed out over a Short feeling too slow. It wasn’t even the second or third time.
But luckily on this particular day I had enough presence of mind to pause and realize this is not okay.
The canary in the coal mine
Look, I’m embarrassed to admit I freaked out more than once over the inability to speed up a YouTube Short. I mean, it’s literally a short video.
But I’m sharing this because it’s about more than playback speed. The way I was using technology was changing my brain for the worse.
I didn’t like how I was acting or how I was feeling.
It reminded me of a conversation I had about a year ago. My friend said TikTok lets you 2x videos, but at the time Instagram didn’t have that feature and it felt “unusable”. I remember being genuinely surprised by that statement.
Fast forward to this year, and the same thing was happening to me with YouTube Shorts.
5 red flags
I refer to my freak out as irrational impatience. It’s one of the five red flags I have come to notice over the past while:
- Balloon-popping
- Do you even know me?
- Lured into the rabbit hole
- Restless consumption
- Irrational impatience
No, these are not real terms. I just find it helpful to name what I’m experiencing so it’s easier to catch it happening and course-correct.
I explain each red flag in this week’s podcast episode along with the changes I’m making this month to reset how I consume content. I also offer a challenge for anyone who might be experiencing the last three red flags and wants to make a change.
Prefer to listen to audio? Find links to podcast players here.
Changing norms
When deciding to share this story about my irrational impatience, I did question if it’s simply a natural progression for humans to be less patient when we become used to a certain level of speed.
In the 90’s, it took a long time to load a website. It was frustrating but groundbreaking so we tolerated it. Now, people will likely leave a website if it doesn’t load in under 3 seconds. Fast internet became the norm, so less than the norm feels painful.
But what about when we can’t tolerate listening to a podcast, audiobook, or video at 1x speed? Or, how about listening to people talking to you? I’ve heard people say they won’t attend a live event if it’s being recorded because they want to be able to watch at 1.5x speed.
Even if we can choose faster speeds, what is the impact? At what point does efficiency sacrifice patience?
Slowing down
As I share on today’s podcast episode, I’m pushing myself to slow down this month, which includes 1x speed on podcasts, audiobooks, and videos.
It’s not because there’s anything inherently wrong with speeding up playback. It’s about disrupting my new "norm" and strengthening my patience. It’s noticing when I’m bored and restless and sticking with it.
I'm also consuming less (especially video) and being intentional about what I do consume. This means I decide in advance what I'll spend my time reading, listening to, or viewing instead of an algorithm suggesting what's next.
I don't know about you, but it seems like everywhere I turn, the message is to keep up so you don't get "left behind". Everything feels like an emergency. And there are important things happening in the world right now, but it's noisier than ever.
Honestly, I'm not sure if this experiment of mine will improve my patience (it's never been a strength of mine), but one thing is for sure... something had to change.