A new look at an old virtue

July 1st, 2022

Hi all,

Happy 4th of July weekend! Hope it's one filled with laughter, sun, and plenty of plant-based sausage. (I'm now a fan.) 

Not to be a downer, but I estimate nearly 20,000 flights will be delayed or cancelled over the next few days. Staff/plane shortages and high demand don't mix well, unlike the iced tea + lemonade 4th of July classic. (I'm proud of that mediocre analogy.)

This means traveling will require some patience. And patience just happens to be the topic for today.

Safe travels, cooking and swimming...
Brendan

Jennifer Roberts, an art history professor at Harvard, always gives her students the same first assignment. She asks them to go to the Harvard Art Museum, pick a sculpture or painting, and stare at it for 3 straight hours.

Why?

It’s intended to be an exercise in developing patience, an important skill when observing art. The students can’t spend those 3 hours volunteering for Elizabeth Warren or developing a gene therapy or doing whatever else they would typically do on a Tuesday afternoon in Cambridge, MA. They’re not allowed to push the pace or force something to happen. They can only sit quietly and absorb the art as it slowly unravels in front of them. They have to be patient.

I like this story because it casts patience in the positive light it deserves. Patience is often considered useful only for tolerating airports or the healthcare system. It seems hopelessly passive, encouraging a position of clenching acceptance. Or unambitious, contradicting the unofficial American trinity of More, Better, Now.

The writer Oliver Burkeman agrees with me on patience, though, noting that “[i]n a world geared for hurry, the capacity to resist the urge to hurry—to allow things to take the time they take—is a way to gain purchase on the world, to do the work that counts, and to derive satisfaction from the doing itself.” (1)

In my own somewhat pithy/consulting-esque words, patience helps you stay sane, stay motivated, and stay committed.

Stay Sane

Consider the following two contradictory facts: you want to make the best of your limited time alive and yet you cannot possibly control how you use all, or even most, of it. You get stuck in traffic. You get sick. Recessions and wars happen. Your ideal plans for the future, known only to you, inevitably get impacted.

And yet, there is an invisible pressure to lock-in the right career, the right partner, and the right house, because the clock is still ticking. Amazon and Netflix have contributed to the illusion that important things can all be delivered in 2 days or less, but reality often resembles sitting and staring at art. You can’t force an important milestone or a surreptitious, life-changing meeting. Before you do anything rash or lose your sanity, patience comes to the rescue. You can accept that the exact timing of these things is mostly out of your control.

When you "allow things to take the time they take", it helps take the edge off the big, anxious push to get somewhere faster than what's possible. 

"I've been waiting here
Waiting for the day to come
Take us to the place
Takin' us where we have gone

They would ask me all the time
Showin' up in ages
'So what you doin' with your life?'
Call it givin' up

I'm just growin' up in stages
Livin' life in phases

Another season changes
And still my ways are aimless"

—"Patience", Tame Impala (2019)

Stay Motivated

When you impatiently sprint and thrash from point A to B, you can burn a lot of energy. Often, though, slow and steady does actually win the race.

The psychology professor Robert Boice has done extensive research on the productivity and success of academic writers. The best are those who work on their papers a little bit each day, not in sudden, impatient bursts that inevitably lose momentum. Patiently putting in your time also helps in the business world, where research has shown that companies started by founders in middle age are more likely to succeed than those started by founders in their 20’s or 30’s.

The stories of Tiger Woods and Susan Polgar sometimes imply that success is a function of starting as early as possible… and sprinting the entire way. But as David Epstein showed in his book Range, these early achievers are the exception, not the rule. A strategy of patiently gathering experience and skills across a few domains can arm you with what he calls “range” and the ability to solve problems and add value by connecting disparate dots. 

In today’s complex, competitive and multi-disciplinary world, a career is rarely a straight line from A to B at IBM, GM, or GE that you can sprint. Enduring the twists and turns requires grit, courage, and at least a little bit of patience.

Stay Committed

In the summer of 2008, I suddenly became obsessed with learning how to kick around and juggle a hacky sack. Coolest pre-teen evar. <3. Like many brief pre-teen obsessions, though, it was just a phase… and one that quickly fizzled without my serious commitment to the sport.

Commitment is the key to getting better at something, and yet, you can’t have commitment without patience. Impatience contributes to too much dabbling… and chasing the next flashy thing before you’ve given the dull thing in front of you enough time.

It’s easy to conflate impatience with hustle, but just because you’re bouncing around and trying different things doesn’t mean you’re making valuable progress in any one of them.

I like photographer Arno Minkkinen's advice: “stay on the bus.” When you leave on a bus trip from your hometown, you spend the first part in the streets you know, seemingly in the same place as you’ve always been. Without feeling like you're making progress, it’s tempting to turn around and try a different bus. You need to stay long enough on the bus to see different scenery slowly unfold and to experience real progress. It takes time; it takes patience.  

The author Robert Greene stayed on the bus. He did not publish his first book until he was 39 years old, after 17+ years of serious writing as both a journalist and screenwriter. He remained committed, even though he was broke and anxious through half of those years. Occasionally it makes sense to quit, but most people fail at something because they quit too soon.

More, Better, Right Now

The other day, I saw an article on Medium titled “How to Drastically Change Your Life in 6 Months or Less.” Maximum change in minimum time: that seems to summarize the online self-help zeitgeist.

Sometimes you need to sprint. A sprint, though, is a short-term tactic, not a long-term strategy. And the biggest gains happen in the long-term.

To stay sane, motivated and committed, I'd like to cast my vote for patience. It's worth your time.

*

References

1) Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman

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