Good things come to those who wait, they say.
I think being patient with the outcomes or rather outputs of one's efforts is a luxury not everyone can afford.
For the most part, it is the natural order of things.
It takes 9 Earth months for a human baby to fully develop in the womb.
Seeds don't grow into towering trees overnight.
For whatever reason it may be, there's a needed gap between input and output, action and result, effort and reward.
The Aggressive Patience Paradox
Being "aggressively patient" is a term I heard a few years ago from Patrick Bet-David. It basically means being impatient with your actions while patient with the results of your actions.
The context it was used in is mostly with regards to building a business.
From that angle, it's sound advice, since building something substantial requires consistent action over time.
You push hard every day while also accepting that the rewards could take months or years to materialize.
What I near easily understand is this approach acknowledges both the reality of delayed gratification and the necessity of persistent effort.
Nowadays however, I think I've more or less shifted towards questioning the value of patience itself, given how rapidly our world changes and how quickly opportunities can disappear.
Waiting in Today's World
We're mostly immersed in an era of algorithmic feeds that usually push out viral moments and overnight success stories, which has somewhat skewed our perception that waiting has become overly expensive to buy, so to speak.
The digital economy rewards speed and first-mover advantage in ways previous generations didn't experience.
Consider these modern realities:
Technology evolves exponentially, what you're waiting to perfect could become obsolete before you launch it.
Attention is the scarcest resource, while you wait to refine your message, someone else captures your audience's limited attention span.
Market windows close rapidly, yesterday's opportunity becomes today's saturated space.
Information asymmetry has collapsed, the advantage once gained by gathering information over time is diminished when everyone has access to the same data almost simultaneously.
The patient farmer waiting for crops to grow made perfect sense in an agricultural economy.
Now, does the patient content creator or entrepreneur make sense in a digital economy where trends emerge and die within weeks?
When Patience Becomes Privilege
There's another aspect to waiting that's not frequently discussed, which is patience is often a privilege of the financially secure.
Those with resources can afford to wait for investments to mature, for the perfect job opportunity, or for their creative pursuits to pay off.
For many others, waiting isn't an option.
Bills don't wait.
Rent doesn't wait.
Family needs don't wait.
The luxury of patience often belongs to those who least need its rewards, that's where it usually works best for them.
Strategic Impatience
How about strategic impatience?
That is knowing when waiting serves us and when it merely preserves a comfortable inaction?
I think maybe we need to recognize when "patience" is just a socially acceptable mask for fear or procrastination.
This is quite hard to discern nowadays.
Procrastination isn't always the cause laziness or poor time management, but often a psychological response to perfectionism or fear of failure.
And a socially acceptable mask like "I'm being patient" or "I'm waiting for the right moment" can disguise our deepest insecurities about moving forward.
Launch quickly, learn faster.
Jump before you feel 100% ready. Chase multiple opportunities simultaneously.
Minimum viable everything, i.e release the simplest version that provides value.
Now again, with all of that said, there's definitely a time and place for genuine patience in our fast-paced world.
Any kind of patience that's chosen consciously rather than defaulted to out of habit is a powerful tool to have.
I'm sure I wouldn't be where I'm at today if I didn't practice being patient even when it was quite expensive to afford. Sacrifices will be made either way.
If I had to modify the quote "good things come to those who wait," I'd change it into something like: "Good things come to those who know when to wait and when to act boldly."
Thanks for reading!! Share your thoughts below on the comments.