The 3 benefits of being impatient

Let me make a prediction and assume that 2019 is going to be your most ambitious year yet as a founder. 

Today I talk about biggest dragon you have to slay to make true your dreams.

Impatience.

Happens to the best of us. You select an ambitious project or undertaking to pursue, and you begin work. Enthusiasm, momentum, and good spirits all present. Naturally, you can’t wait for the results to come, and they can’t come too soon, either.

Whether it’s launching a new business, expanding to foreign territory, or saying yes to lead a new initiative at your organization that has not been done before, impatience often creeps.

Impatience is the number one enemy for ambitious people.

It’s a topic we’re all familiar with, with its effects, with what we ought to do instead, but we don’t do anything. 

Most impatient people — like someone who doesn’t work out but is fully aware of the benefits of it — diplomatically dismiss it as yes, something we ought to get better at, that good things come to those who wait, that nothing happens overnight — yet we still suffer greatly from it and don’t change much.

Suffer is the right word, because based on our attitude towards patience we can be victim to a lot of unfulfilled success. 

We actually have good reason to be impatient.

At the core of it, at least for me, patience itself is easy to adhere to if there is a guarantee at the end. It’s not so easy when the goal hasn’t been achieved before. 

Ordering a pizza on a Friday night may take up to 45 mins and you’re starving, but experience taught you that the probability of attaining your goal eventually is quite high.

This expectation-setting helps with the patience process, as you are familiar with this road, and knowledgeably anticipate the reward in due time, etc.

Unfortunately, most ambitious people, by definition, are working on projects that are no wear as easy to measure or predict the success of.

Yet, impatience bears several hidden benefits. Read on.

Impatient people are often happy to wait. But they want a form of guarantee that the wait will pay off.

I know I’m like that. I can wait for years, I just want to know that my goal is guaranteed. 

Thus the €1M question: How do we know if our effort will be worth the wait?

If you can’t help being impatient, it turns out that you can make it work for you. By understanding how it works, by using it as brand fuel, and by recognizing that you will always “get” something at the end.

1. It always gets messy in the middle.

In his book The Dip, Seth [Godin] wrote about how it’s easy and even fun at the start of any new ambitious project. Motivation, action and momentum are all present. It’s what inevitably happens to the majority of people that often decides their fate — meeting the dip. 

The dip, as he explains, is the series of challenges that head-on challenge the very existence and success of your project. Steven Pressfield describes it as the Resistance in his book The War of Art, even personifying it as literally someone who follows you around and coerces you to give up in various ways.

Similar to a market correction, similar to air turbulence, dips are inevitable. They do not signify error in your process, or signs of giving up, as much as they are just a means of getting to your destination. 

Addicted to Ambition

Did you know that simply recognizing that you are going through the dip greatly improves your chances of success? While not an illness, it definitely clouds your judgement from seeing what is actually there.

The Struggle is the Shortcut

Where you ever impatient queuing at a supermarket line and decided to “be smart” and shift to another queue, or two to improve your chances of getting served faster? Did you ever feel like you should’ve just stayed put and not have moved in the first place? Yes me too. 

There is a shortcut, and it is to stay the course. What you put out to the world needs to fully mature before you can make an informed call on your next step.

2. Make lemonade (or content).

Smart people would actually take the struggle and turn it into a brand-building opportunity to document your journey. You’re on your way anyway! You might as well share it with others.

I am certain that what you’re working on is statistically scary for others to pursue, otherwise everyone would’ve done it — and it wouldn’t have been challenging to do in the first place. Therefore, to even share how you’ve went on your path, like an adventurer who lives to tell his tale, can provide tons of value to others and also back to you in terms of personal branding and driving more awareness to your business or project.

The delightful irony here is that creating such content (in video, audio, and written) is often the very thing that decides [and accelerates] your success.

What’s the worst that could happen?

Best case scenario: You reached your end goal. You hit your milestone and make it. Your story has been there to see from the start for all to see, learn from, and get inspired from.

Worst case scenario: You did not reach your end goal. In which case, you probably have tons of learnings to share, which I guarantee you others will care deeply to hear about — you having gone through that experience, and most importantly your insights and advice for someone looking to go down a similar path, etc.

Worst possible scenario: You failed. Because you did not follow through adequately and fell victim to the dip, which we all have to go through regardless what path we choose. You might as well choose a great path.

3. Even trees pivot. Like 2–4 times a year.

I was going to say you are not a tree, you can pivot. But that would not be fair to the tree. Even a tree pivots 2–4 times a year depending on the season. 

Some trees go through all 4 seasons, and others broadly go through summer and winter depending on the weather (market) they’re in — but they all go through change (nature heads please do not correct me).

To take this even further, who’s to say that your internal expertise as an individual, a team, an organization, is best fitted to be used only one way?

You should remind yourself that your work is worthwhile, and even though you may not end up making what you set out to make precisely, who does? 

This is the difference between working on your craft as a professional and adopting a personal hobby. You must let the market (or your audience) interact with your work, and you must sync it to their worldviews, tastes, dreams, and fears.

If you’re pivoting, you can use the following axis for navigation:

• Axis 1: Shift the audience [market]
• Axis 2: Shift the solution [product/service]
• Axis 3: Shift the scope of the problem you’re solving [go bigger, go narrower]

Transfer those Transferrable Skills

“Those who can’t do, teach.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” — Jack Black

Taming Wild Impatience

I thought this article would be about the disadvantages of impatience. I realized that impatience can be one of the best inspiring factors behind your success, if you know how to tame and leverage it for your own benefit.

If you’re impatient — recognize that you’re approaching, enduring the dip, which is normal.

If you’re impatient — recognize that there is no better opportunity to document and create video, audio, and written content to build brand while you go through the motions.

If you’re impatient — recognize that you will never hit a dead end, you will always be able to use the ingredients gathered to create value in some way shape or form.