Ctrl-Save moments of your life

When my kids were in elementary school, it had just become common that they did their homework on the computer. Whenever I walked by them working on it, I would say, “Control-s.” Back then there was no automatic saving or backup—you needed to remember to “save as you go,” so I taught them all the keyboard command to save and continue—Ctrl+s.

I listened to this podcast from Radiolab and the guest on the show talked about trying to slow down time by periodically “pressing Ctrl-Save” in her mind. That was her way of describing taking a moment and noticing, trying to keep in her memory, what was going on at the moment.

It’s an interesting episode, where they discussed the way time seems to pass so quickly, like a blur, and wondered about how to slow it down—or at least to make the passage of time feel slower. I’ve thought about this myself a lot and considered such things as noticing, living mindfully, and so on. But I hadn’t heard anyone call it pressing Ctrl-Save. I like it.