I’m impatient by nature, which leads me to many habits I want to correct.
- I eat too fast.
- If I play a game with my family, I expect them (wrongly) to play faster.
- When I see a task to do, I want to jump on it (sometimes before my prioritization process).
- When I learn a new language or play chess, I expect faster progress (impatience).
I think working on the patience muscle is an important thing. In fact, I’ve outlined 7 steps for doing so here.
At the same time, two thinkers I admire helped me find a way to use my impatience (sometimes) to my advantage.
How to use impatience to improve the results.
Seth Godin (The Practice) and Naval Ravikant (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant_see my summary), touched on the concept of impatience. They speak about impatience for the actions and patience for the results.
Impatience for the actions.
Don’t wait too long to ship your work. Perfection does not exist. Execute your ideas. Make it now. Launch your next action.
In the business world, we speak about lead indicators. The activity you can influence. A salesperson can prospect, visit, and follow up with customers, whatever the results.
An artist can practice daily, even though no one is following him.
I like this concept. The one thing to be cautious of, especially for impatient people, is prioritizing the actions. As our time is finite, the idea is to choose the right actions and then do it with impatience.
Patience for the outcome
Most of the projects are complex. They depend on a lot of parameters. And whatever you do, you don’t control the results fully.
You control the intention, the practice, the routines, and the actions you take. Which is already a big part of the success equation. But then, you need to be patient enough not to quit.
When you do the important work daily (impatience for the actions), the longer your wait (patience), the better your chances are.
One way to use it
So I came to the conclusion that I can use my impatience (sometimes) to accelerate my projects.
I need to be cautious in selecting the right actions, and then develop my patience for the results.
How could you use impatience to your advantage?
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