# 176: Studying Patience
Story behind the Passage
More or less accidentally, I just read the book by Matthias Sutter. I had just intended to look up a few passages but then I went through it all. It was easily possible because it is a collection of some of the most groundbreaking studies on patience and its various long-term impacts on life. Anyone who is a bit into behavioral economics will most likely know many of them. Above all, there is the Marshmallow Experiment on instant gradification that shows how patiently or impatiently children respond to rewards such as candy and how that relates to their further development.
I am thinking so much about patience these days because of my startup awakening several months ago. It has taken me long enough to realize that much of the impatience that drives founders in this environment actually leads to nothing — in the overwhelming majority of cases. But the connections are obviously complicated. There are many interdependencies and you always end up with a hen and egg problem — do only impatient people start startups or is patience one of the really unimportant criteria? How is the level of education connected to people becoming entrepreneurs? How does entrepreneurship correlate with patience and how does patience affect the success of startups?
Obviously, Sutter’s book has nothing to do with startups but what I am trying to get at now is that all this focus on being fast is basically bullshit — there is no substance. It simply does not matter if you rush all the time because the really important things will require depth and this depth cannot be reached simply by being fast all the time. There is no point, even though all people around you are claiming this. And the figures show this. Otherwise most startups would be successful because they are so much faster than any ‘traditional’ business, right? So, my real question is not how much of a predisposition you have, e.g., from childhood. This is what Sutter focuses on based on the studies he cites. My interest is in how your environment has the power to change your patience scale. And spending time in the startup environment probably was not too helpful for me in this regard.
But that is overly negative, of course. I do not mean it this way. Overall, spending time in an environment that stresses speed over basically anything else is a move that people do who want to reach goals faster. As with anything, I think that patience is such a relative and fuzzy term. So, when I say I am impatient, I am probably still 100 times more patient than the average founder — even the average person, whatever “average” means to you. I just realized this too late. And I am happy that I have realized it at all. What all this boils down to is that entrepreneurship is driven by speed, by innovating faster than others, but by innovating with brain and hard work. Both together, I think, can only really thrive if you measure these qualities over time. And there we go — this takes us to stories of patience.
My Learnings
“Es sind dann die kleinen Freuden des Lebens, die sie trösten: eine Zigarette, ein Gläschen Wein und besonders gerne leckere Schokolade…“ / “It is the small gifts of life that give her comfort: a cigarette, a glass of whine, and, especially, she likes delicious chocolate.” Sutter later reveals that this introductory story is fictional. But, of course, it is a wonderful way of summarizing the key results of the entire book: Impatience leads to several negative consequences, e.g., less money, less job security, less health and various other things. This gets me to the ambivalence already: The entire book, as the topic suggests, puts short-term orientation in a negative light due to all the different harmful consequences. The point is, yes, but…
Again, because of the complexity that is involved in all this, everything I will be saying will be misleading or too general because much of it is already included in the constraints of the studies Sutter presents. What I have to definitely nuance is the impact of culture on this evaluation. Sutter later mentions this issue but I have to stress it. There is so much cultural bias involved when assessing patience as some supposedly universal human quality. Yes, planning for tomorrow and the concern to be safe in the future — a very German way of thinking — is important. But what about the longing of people to really live in the moment? What about the rising popularity of Estern philosophy — of living in the here and now? Are these not indications that we are finally moving more towards the middle between the two extremes; complete future orientation and complete impatience?
Obviously, this is a rhetorical question because of the very fact that I am posing it this way. I guess, everyone knows enough people who put themselves under so much pressure by living only for the future that they die of a heart attack before they can reap any of the fruits. Yes, they might prove extremely patient but it does not help them at all — not even mentioning the topic of happiness. Yes, it is tragic that ‘impatient’ people who do not have much to look forward have no other alternatives than enjoying the “small things” in life. But you know what, these things are worthwhile!
Sutter stereotypically chooses chocolate and alcohol as examples because these also correlate with impatience and addiction. Still, let us be a little less radical. There are also enough people who enjoy the small things that are not drugs — e.g., the sun in the spring and birds singing in the morning. These are the present moments with no future or past orientation. Maybe this kind of enjoying the here and now does not necessarily run against higher patience levels because impatient people might not enjoy nature this way. I do not know. This is not part of Sutter’s story. What I simply want to get at is that there are many socio-economic and cultural biases involved in this research from the start. And they can only be dissolved if research itself gets less Western-centric.
So, why do I care so much about all of this? I think, for me, it all boils down to self-confidence again. I did not believe I was a patient person until I came to realize how patient I actually am, compared to some really impatient folks who get nothing done. Yes, there is comparison involved but sometimes this really helps. Not for the purpose of self-elevation but for understanding yourself better. The way I understand myself now, I know that most of the outstanding goals I achieved in the past where only possible because I was patient enough to even aim at them but also impatient enough to reach them quickly. This is the exciting finding and there is nothing more than pride and joy I feel about this. And I am confident that the next goals can be reached with even more patience because I have understood, deep down inside, that really great things will take time. This is how it is. But it takes a lot of patience to realize this.
“Grass does not grow faster if you pull it.”
Reflection Questions
1) Do you think patience is more important for a successful career than intelligence? How are the two related in your view?
2) Which examples can you name from your life that show how (im)patient you are?
3) Which methods do you use for improving your ability to live in the “here and now”?