Finding Balance In Our Impatience
Have you ever taken the pizza out of the oven two minutes early because you just couldn’t wait? Or left lines that were barely moving, only to get into an even slower one? Or breaking up a good healthy relationship because you weren’t sure where it was going, and couldn’t stand the uncertainty?
We’ve all been impatient and we’ve all made rash decisions when impatience got the better of us. Then again, we’ve also been overly patient at times, sticking with projects, jobs, or relationships long after it made sense to do so.
Eventually, there’s this thought on which will cost us more in life—patience or impatience? Of course, different people will have different answers. The ideal outcome would be, to get it right every time we let our impatience lead us when changing course makes sense, and to stay on the course when that made the most sense.
Unfortunately, no one gets it right every time.
Now, here’s the thing: If we understand our impatience better, it will give us more control to get it right more of the time. Below are three useful insights about our impatience:
1. Impatience Come With Goals
Impatience is triggered when we have a goal and realise it’s going to cost us more than we initially thought to reach it.
For example, if you sit in a room with nothing on your mind, you will not be impatient because you’re just there. Now, if you decide to go to a shopping mall to buy a pair of new sneakers, you have adopted a goal. At this point, you are not impatient yet, but you might be making ways towards it. Suppose you want to get a pair of new sneakers by the end of the day, the longer it takes for you to find them, the more impatient you grow.
Whenever I start writing my next blog, I usually think it will take about two days to have everything ready for it to be published. I’m on schedule, but then I get an even better idea for a blog. I realise that continuing to write my first blog is costing me the opportunity to work on my second more interesting blog. You’ve guessed it. At that point, I start to grow impatient.
Or lately, it has been snowing here and it would take me ten minutes extra to travel home. There were several interferences and traffic jams which made me have to wait outside in the cold. Then I realised that it was going to take me more than just ten minutes extra to get home. I was already impatient, and I grew even more impatient.
2. Impatience Motivates Us To Reduce Costs
At the same time, impatience motivates us to reduce the costs of reaching our goal or to switch goals. When we realise it’s going to cost us more than we thought to get to our goal, we start looking for ways to avoid the additional costs in time, pain, distraction, or opportunity.
“It’s a heritage from our evolution,” says Marc Wittmann, a psychologist at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology. Our impatience made sure we didn’t die from spending too long on a single unrewarding activity. It gave us the impulse to act.
So, Instead of direly walking around in the shopping mall looking for a new pair of sneakers, we can turn to our mobile devices to shop online; when writing one blog while dreaming of writing another, I might try to speed up work on the first, or just set it aside to work on the more interesting idea; knowing how terrible the traffic will be on the following days, I start looking for alternate routes or simply decide to work from home.
Unfortunately, the fast pace of the current society has thrown our internal clock out of balance. “Time stretches,” Wittman says. “We get mad.” It creates unrealistic expectations that can’t be rewarded fast enough, or rewarded at all. When things move slower than we expect, our internal clock even plays tricks on us by stretching out the wait, summoning anger out of proportion to the delay.
3. Impatience Increases With More Options
Any project we do is bound to have its downs. There will be moments when we feel optimistic and on top of the world, and others when we doubt the project will work at all, especially when there are more options to choose from. In general, the more options we have, the more we lean towards impatience. If we have only one project to work on, we can be fairly patient and just solve the problems as they come.
In contrast, if we have several other projects we could be working on, we’re much more likely to abandon the current one when it gets hard. If we repeatedly do this when a project gets hard, we will find ourselves with a dozen unfinished projects lying around with nothing to show for all our effort.
To have options is good, but having too many can be bad. Barry Schwartz explains in the “Paradox of Choice” that having too many options can make it more difficult to choose in the first place. This can result in more regret and a greater tendency to change course after the choice has been made.
A Better Chance To Find Balance
When we understand how impatience works, we can manage it better. We can put our impatience to use when it’s time to speed things up or change course. And we can learn to calm our impatience when it makes more sense to stay the course.
Here are some questions we can ask ourselves when we find ourselves growing impatient:
- What is my goal?
- What is going to cost me to reach this goal?
- What are foreseeable additional costs?
- What are my other options?
- Do I have too many options?
- Do these options reduce the costs of reaching this goal?
- Is it time to abandon this goal?
Knowing how impatience work will give us a better chance to find balance, so we can stay the course or change it when it makes sense.
- What's causing your impatience?
- How do you deal with it?
Have your say in the comment section 🙂
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This was a refreshing perspective in comparison to most mindfulness techniques out there now. I never knew that impatience could actually be a good thing. For me I found I’m often impatient when it comes to blog writing as well, so many ideas and it seems like so little time.
Hi Alisa, I know how you feel because that’s the same with me. There’s never enough time and never too many ideas. It’s good to park some of those ideas written down in a notebook and out of sight in order to be fully focused on the task at hand 🙂
Great post! Love that you are bringing awareness to being impatient. This is so important for us to become aware of and make the realization that we are being this way during certain tasks or with certain people. Thank you for sharing. 🙂
Thanks Angelina! 🙂
I get impatient when I have an idea for a new product and I went it done now. I have learned to sit back and really think about what I need to do to achieve my goal. This allows me to really think about all that is going to go into bringing the new product to life. Patience in some cases needs to be mastered or we could land up regretting a decision.
Hi Joyce, so nice to hear from you 🙂 That’s absolutely true, however, be mindful that patience could bring regrets as well. Thanks for dropping by!
Great post! I get really impatient if someone is doing a task I know that I could have done faster/better. E.g. when my boyfriend is cooking. I’m terrible sometimes but I think it’s crucial to be aware than to do it without realising it. At least that’s what I tell myself.
Hi Pernille, great that you’re being aware of that 🙂 awareness of your own thoughts and actions is a must in order to find the balance.
Enjoyed your post.Made me consider impatience and patience. My daughter has aspergers and finds choosing what to drink and eat when we go out really difficult when there is just too much choice! Then I get impatient! But if they weren’t enough choice then I wouldn’t like that either!
Hi Jacqueline, thank you 🙂 thanks for sharing your story.
Interesting take on impatience. Typically in mindfulness training we are taught to release the feeling of impatience as it often denotes an unbalanced mind, but in the sense of wanting to accomplish things and see the future to fruition, it has its benefits. It’s always great to see methods of transmuting negative energy to the positive!
Hi Matthew, thank you 🙂
Your article was very interesting. I have been told multiple times I am the most impatient person definitely gives me something to think about and work on! Thank you.
Hi Jessica, thank you and I’m glad it got you to think 🙂
Love this post! I tend to be a very impatient person, and it usually is more of a help than a hinderance.
Hi Kimmy, that’s great! Impatience can be useful from time to time 🙂
Your posts are always inspiring. Reading through this, I can be able to find tips that can help me find that needed balance when facing difficulty decisions in life. Thanks.
Hi John, great to hear from you again! Thank you and I’m glad it was helpful.
Ah – to have more Patience – one of the most valuable virtues I believe. My impatience is sometimes some things that often never occur will happen ie some situations where I may think that another person could do better than they do. I’m sometimes impatient with someone’s shortcomings. I wish it not so and pray that it changes – soon.
Hi Deborah, you remind me of a good friend of mine. Do be careful with this because from my experience, you may not accept a person for who he or she is, which can be hurtful.
The vast number of options makes me overwhelmed easily. I have to tell myself there is more than one way but pick one and stick with it Impatience to reach a goal can get in the way of that decision. Thanks for making me think.
Hi Meghan, thanks for sharing your thoughts 🙂
I never thought of impatience being useful sometimes but that’s a great point of view and actually makes a lot of sense!
I get very impatient writing blog posts sometimes, like you mentioned I skip to a different idea and sometimes never finish my original idea! I’m going to try to focus on one project at a time now, thanks for the tips!
Hi Lauren, that’s great! I’m glad it was helpful 🙂 Best of luck and thank you!
I love the way you wrote this. I think my favourite part was at the beginning where you mention being impatient or overly patient. It’s interesting isn’t it?
When I am becoming impatient about something, I’ve been trying mindfulness. Once I practice more, I believe this will help me a great deal.
Hi Malinda, thank you! Yes, it’s interesting indeed. The more I think about it, the more of a paradox it becomes. Thanks for reading 🙂
So I’m not the only one who gets new blog post ideas right in the middle of writing the current post! The worst is when I’m researching information or complementary resources for a post… I always end up stumbling upon interesting information that inspires a whole other post! I can’t complain though… having “too many” content ideas really isn’t a bad thing, haha! I find publishing new posts every 2 weeks instead of every week really helps me avoid stress and impatience. This schedule allows me to enjoy the process of creating content (and all the tangents I wander along in the process) without it starting to feel like stressful work to meet deadlines.
Hi Rebecca, you have a great solution to this issue. I too have been rescheduling me writing process and publishing. I’m going to try your schedule of every two weeks 🙂 thanks!
Very insightful post! I love the questions to ask at the end. My impatience flares up the most when I’m nearing a deadline for a goal and things pop up that slow me down. I start watching the clock. Sometimes I just need to breathe…and let go of the time constraint, when they are self imposed.
Hi Cindy, thank you! That situation sounds too familiar haha. You just reminded to take a breather! Thanks!!!
What a unique perspective! Love this post so much. I have always been overly impatient but I never considered that this could actually be a good trait in some situations
Hi Danielle, thank you 🙂 I think it’s really about finding that balance, which I haven’t even found for myself. Take in mind that it might be a life long quest 🙂 thanks for dropping by!
Interesting thoughts on this. Impatience is definitely a problem for most people!
Thanks Abby, I agree with you on that 🙂 Myself as well every now and then.
I was very impatient when I was younger. I was constantly worried that something awesome could happen without me being involved or that I would miss important chances. Now that I am a “grown up woman” I still have goals in my life but also the serenity and the selfestime to take it easy and be patience!
Hi Silvia, I think many of us went through the same phase. I remember clearly when I had the fear of missing out opportunities. I’m glad you found the balance in life 🙂
I really enjoyed reading this! I am such an impatient person. When I write I want to get it out there for people to read immediately. This ultimately causes me to overlook simple mistakes that could have been resolved by taking a bit more time to edit. This is something I am really working on as the result of a polished look is definitely worth the extra cost in time that it takes to assure that outcome.
Thanks for posting!
Hi Linday, great to hear from you! I have this from time to time as well, especially when I tend to overanalyse my own work. I’m glad to hear you’re working on it! You’re welcome and thank you for dropping by. Till next time 🙂
Great insights! I think the internet has largely made us impatient because everything happens instantaneously, so everything in real life seems to drag by comparison. Also, the internet provides us with infinite options. Just look at the number of open tabs on anyone’s computer. I also like how you point out that working on multiple projects increases impatience because this is definitely something that I’m going through and my boyfriend to an even greater degree. You’ve provided some very helpful tips on how to deal with this.
Hi Kate, I feel the same way. Even a slow page load can make me impatient. Luckily, I could catch myself in those moments. Thanks for dropping by Kate 🙂
Ahh yes I’m dealing with impatience which is leading me to feel like I’m going crazy. I keep finding more things I’d like to do so this it’s hard to finish up the last thing. Especially with blog posts and all they entail. I want instant results so I can move on. I’m learning how to balance and I’m impatient with that as well. I’m really trying to pay attention to not getting too impatient wanting my ideas finished ASAP but losing sore of my children and the help they need. I find I get frustrated if they ask me to do anything that detours from my ideas and that is not good. They are the most important thing to me not my output.
Hi Karie, I understand your frustration since I’ve been there often myself. Why do you keep finding more other things to do? It helps to make a priority list with what is urgent is what is not. It might be a good idea to have someone like a dear friend or your husband as a accountability partner. We sometimes need a push from others to get things done 🙂 That’s great! That’s the right thing to do. Do what you need to do first, all other comes after.