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“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”
“The first step toward patience is to become aware of when your internal dialogue is running wild and dragging you with it. The second step in creating patience is understanding and accepting that there is no such thing as reaching a point of perfection in anything.” ― Thomas M. Sterner, The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus into Your Life
≈ Endurance
沉住氣
好事多磨
十年磨一劍
忍一時風平浪靜
One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.
All the benefits in life come from compound interests. It is just a function/matter of time. Show up, and then show up consistently. Play long-term games. Practice delayed gratification. Put in the time. Let things mature. Don’t rush. Be patient.
- Good rule of thumb: Anything that creates real value will most likely take much longer and be much harder than you think.
- What scales overnight isn’t usually sustainable. What is sustainable rarely scales quickly. Everything timeless takes time.
Slack in project management is the time a task can be delayed without causing a delay to either subsequent tasks or project completion time. The amount of time before a constraint binds.
Adopt the pace of nature: Her secret is patience.
When does patience serve you, and when does it hold you back?
Patience benefits you when:
- Gathering information:
- Facing complex problems requires thoughtful solutions.
- Making informed decisions requires time.
- Negotiating: Calmness and strategic waiting often yield better results.
- Long-term goals: Achieving significant outcomes needs sustained effort.
Patience is detrimental when:
- Time-sensitive opportunities: Acting fast is critical.
- Unsafe situations: Facing urgent crises demanding immediate action. Delaying action can be dangerous.
- Exploitation or disrespect: Firm boundaries need immediate enforcement.
Decision-Razor
Weigh the potential benefits of delayed action against the risks of inaction to determine the best approach.
Patience builds foundations that last. Patience builds what shortcuts destroy. Patience is the secret sauce.
“Slow Change Can Be Radical Change” by Rebecca Solnit
Someone at the dinner table wanted to know what everyone’s turning point on climate was, which is to say she wanted us to tell a story with a pivotal moment. She wanted sudden; all I had was slow, the story of a journey with many steps, gradual shifts, accumulating knowledge, concern, and commitment. A lot had happened but it had happened in many increments over a few decades, not via one transformative anything.
You could read up on the essentials in a day, probably in an hour, possibly in a quarter of an hour. But the point is to somehow so deeply embed those values, perspectives, and insights in yourself. The job is not to know; it’s to become.
A lot of change is undramatic growth, transformation, or decay, or rather its timescale means the drama might not be perceptible to the impatient.
Describing the slowness of change is often confused with acceptance of the status quo. It’s really the opposite: an argument that the status quo must be changed, and it will take steadfast commitment to see the job through. It’s not accepting defeat; it’s accepting the terms of possible victory.