There is an impatience in me, like I would assume is in a lot of people, that makes me want things to happen quickly. If I’m trying to do something, I want to get it done fast, if I have to be somewhere my instinct is to wait until I have to leave and then rush to it. If I set myself a goal I’ll try and think of the fastest way to achieve it. But this is very counter productive.

You learn by doing, not from what’s done

The problem with rushing things along is that you miss the things along the way. If you don’t give yourself the time to consider what you’re doing, it’s likely that you’ll end up doing the wrong thing. And while you’re doing the thing, if you’re rushing through it, you’re more likely to make mistakes and not learn as much as you could. Once it’s done and you look back on it, you’re most likely to just see it as an obstacle or a hurdle that you got over, rather than something you achieved. Maybe you can give yourself a pat on the back for something like that, but it’s not going to help you with the next thing.

There is something good to be said about doing things quickly, sure. The concept of ‘rapid prototyping’ comes to mind, and the benefits of instant messaging. But even both of these things are best to do with consideration. I think that’s what I’m talking about more than anything, taking a considered approach. Thinking not just about the short term and what comes next, but the long term and how what you do carries forward.

Let me walk you through a personal example.

Now hold on a minute

During my first year of University I came home during the Easter break. I spent most of my time revising, reading, or playing board games with my family. We were also repainting a wall in one of the rooms because my parents wanted to do it up to be a guest room for when my grandparents came to stay. So they asked me to help, and I think I was happy to.

After lunch I went and laid down some old newspapers, got the paint and a brush, set it up by the wall, and thought I was ready to go.

‘Now hold on a minute’ my dad says, coming into the room. He looks at the set up I’ve got going on and shakes his head slightly. ‘Are you going to do the painting in those clothes?’ I was of course wearing normal, day to day clothes. Whoops. I leave the room and change into some older, shittier clothes and come back expecting to see him painting. But no. Instead I see him finishing putting masking tape over the skirting boards, and mixing the paint in the pot first. Obviously. I would have done that too. Maybe.

But I just want to get started and get it done. I go over and pick up the brush,

‘Okay’ I say, ‘can we go now?’ He’s nodding and hands me the paint roller. I dunk it in the tray, move it up and down a bit, thwack it on the wall, and start painting.

‘Now hang on’ he says reaching for the roller. ‘Take your time with it, this is just the first coat we should make sure it’s even.’ He then proceeds to slowly roll over the paint I put on the wall, and it looks immediately better, more like someone painted a wall and less like someone tried to tread paint on a wall with a brush.

I have this distinct and formative memory of the ‘now hold on a minute’ phrase and my dad taking his considered time to do it well and properly. I remember feeling quite foolish. I thought it was ‘just painting’ so I could get on with it and move through it quickly.

There are really only two ways you can get things done well. Either you can have enough experience doing something that you know how to do it well, and so can do it well again. Or you don’t have the experience so you take your time and do it with a considered approach, you think about what you’re doing before you do it.

Obviously this can be applied to a lot more than just painting a wall but I use this example because I know my dad reads these sometimes. So if you’re reading this dad, hi 👋 love you.

Accelerating impatience

This ‘considered approach’ is a good approach for tasks and doing things in general, but it’s also a good approach for making decisions. I believe that as a society we have become worse at taking our time with things. I see this decline most commonly blamed on the rise of the internet and the gains we’ve made with technology. And I think that’s probably true. I’m going to explore that for a second.

The telephone was invented 174 years ago. In the grand scheme of humanity, this is incredibly recent. Telephones only became common in general households in the 1950s but they were big, difficult to use, time consuming things that required operators. Cellular telephones, the likes of which everyone has today, that use low-powered radio transmitters and computer equipment to switch a call from one area to another, were only available in the 1960s. And even then the first text message wasn’t sent until 1992!

It’s nuts to think about how much the transfer of information has accelerated in the past century. Instant messaging and social media is brand spanking new. With the advancement of communications technology and the development of various social applications we have come to expect one of the most important parts of the human experience, connection with other people, to happen quickly and immediately. And that expectation has bled into other things.

Email, fast food, online shopping, the microwave, recreational drugs, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc, have all contributed to an idea that has fallen out of popular interested since 2005, ‘instant gratification’. When we get something good we get a hit of a chemicals in our brains (I’m not exactly sure what it’s called maybe dopamine or serotonin, I’m not clued up on brain chemistry) that makes us feel good and make us want more.

This is an evolutionary trait that helped humans become better, and more diligent at survival. But with the amount of instant gratification we expose ourselves to these days, it means we rush things. We do things quickly to get the hit or to feel good in the short term.

Now, I’m not an old fogie who’s going to tell you this is all bad and we should go back to the 60s. I doubt there’s anything seriously wrong with a healthy amount of instant gratification. But I think it’s an important thing to consider when you taking big or important decisions. To consider the long term, the ‘what comes next’ and considering consequence, not just what is happening.

Instant gratification pared with the exposure we have to everything going on in the world online make it too easy for a person to get caught up in comparing themselves to other people. To be impressed or envious of someone else and then want to follow in their foot steps, or achieve what they have achieved. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, some times that’s called inspiration. But you’ve only seen the result, not what it has taken to get there.

Conclusion

The next decision you make whether it’s big or small, ‘hold on a minute’ and think it through. Why are you doing it? What affect is it going to have on the rest of the day, on the rest of the week, or if it’s big enough, on the rest of your life? How can you change the decision your about to make to be better for you? For the people around you? Don’t try and do this for everything, you’d get tired of thinking before breakfast, but practice this kind of ‘thoughtfulness’ so that when you do make big decisions you’ve had practice.