Patience

A teenager with learning difficulties wants to get something from the grocery store by himself. As he carefully buttons up his shirt he thinks about how it’s going to be. He’s determined. But he’s also anxious. It takes him an hour to get there. All he wants is some yoghurt. He knows exactly where it is. He takes the pack to the check-out and waits in line. As his turn comes and he’s asked for payment, he forgets where his money is. He becomes agitated. The cashier looks at him, unimpressed. Back in the line, a woman tuts and a man sighs. Both noises pierce and shake the boy’s flustered consciousness. Someone else switches lane pointedly. The boy is flushing red and starting to sweat. The excruciation feels endless.

As a dad of a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder, I see situations like this all the time. I’m also a working dad: I work in business development. Part of my job is to talk on the phone to a lot of people who don’t necessarily want to hear from me. So I’m confronted with episodes of impatience dozens of times every single day.

This got me thinking about patience, and how important it is, and how easily it’s lost.

When was the last time you felt impatient?  

Was it at work? Did someone you were explaining something to take too long to understand? Did your laptop take a while to wake up and you thought to speed up the process by banging your mouse on your desk? Or did someone call you, trying to sell you something (be kind to those people!) Did you not get an immediate reply to an email? Or on Slack - is instant messaging not delivering fast enough for you? 

Is this article taking too long to make its point? Or was it in your personal life? Was it in a traffic jam? Did your child take an age to get dressed? Did you have to reluctantly fill out a form? Did your same-day delivery take an extra day? Did the film you were watching take too long to develop the story and you needed the quicker fix of engagement guaranteed by your smartphone?

Whether it’s in life or work, interpersonal or private, impatience is pandemic, perpetual and pernicious. Impatience is also unproductive. Studies like this from American Economic Review demonstrate this. But we don’t even need the studies to convince us; we all know this personally, viscerally, as suffering human beings.

And this might be getting even worse now as we’ve thrown ourselves headlong into an always-on, hyper-connected relentless digital world.

As a dad, knowledge worker and human, and someone who’s talked to a lot of people in trying circumstances on the topic, I offer some advice to the 7bn contributors to impatience in the world.

Think about what triggers impatient feelings and behaviours in you. There may be just two or three. Then try to associate those triggers with a thought process, a mantra-like ‘ok, it’s that feeling again, I need to take a step back and just look at what’s going on here.’ Practice in life to be better when you’re at work, and vice versa.

Reframe the apparent slowness or ineptness of the others. That person causing you to feel the way you are feeling is a complex entity, full of colour, humour, joy and sorrow. What’s sitting behind the face of that person who annoys you so much? Everyone’s fighting a battle you know nothing about is the cliché, and the truth. And that slow, inept colleague may have qualities you haven’t yet seen or given yourself a chance to enjoy. The business case for neurodiversity is growing as it is better understood.

Being patient with others is good for you. You are likely to be happier. You will suffer less yourself by being and showing patience. You will make more rational, better business and life decisions if you are more inclined to be cool, calm and collected. Being patient and kind may make you happier yourself. And do you really want to be the tutting, sighing, bothered person in the line anyway? It’s an awful look.

Recognise what’s actually in your gift. Aim for small gains. You cannot affect the objective flow of time. And you mostly can’t speed the world up. But you can affect how you interpret and feel about both. Set achievable goals like dealing better with an impatience-inducing scenario and reflecting on it this week.

You can get better at patience. Most discussions about personal development are about skills. Far fewer are about behaviours and fewer still about values such as patience, empathy and kindness. But behaviours and values are at least as important, and realigning those consciously is possible and practical. 

Don’t expect to eradicate impatience from your personal or business life any time soon. It takes some time and lots of discipline to even make small changes to well-established habits.

Be patient.