Friday, August 23, 2019

Impatience

Distractions abound. Impatience is a terrible distraction. It is wanting something without the willingness to commit the necessary time to the process. In other words, most of the time we want it instantly. And most of the time, important stuff takes time. 

My son is brilliant, sweet, wonderful, warm, fun man, but completely incapable of delayed gratification of any type it seems. He is the only one of us who does not have a college degree, which of course is just an exercise in delayed gratification. He can’t save money nor save for retirement, again exercises in delayed gratification, or in other words - impatience. No instant here. Its killing his progress.

But you can’t build wealth or knowledge or skills or a business with impatience. You can’t build credibility without patience and consistency. You can’t build trust being impatient. These stepping stones of progress take time and you may not see the results that you are aiming toward, for a long time. Projects at scale, take time to come to fruition, to produce something world changing, to have results that move us all. The more important your task or goal is, then longer it may take to see it happen. The bigger the project, the more complex the pieces are, and the longer it takes to find alignment. Thus impatience becomes a distraction.


The overpowering need to see results sooner than they are ready to appear, makes many important actions and decisions seem to be overwhelming. It is tempting to quit before success is achieved. It is difficult to keep going if you are impatient for the the results, more than the process. Focus on the right processes, and the results will get here - eventually. But they will get here.