I ordered something on Amazon yesterday at 3 PM. It arrived today at 10 AM.
Nineteen hours. And I was annoyed it took that long.
That's insane. Twenty years ago, ordering something meant waiting two weeks and hoping it showed up. Now I'm frustrated if it takes more than a day.
I caught myself doing this and realized I'm completely broken when it comes to patience.
Everything Is Instant Now
Think about what waiting used to look like.
You wanted to watch a TV show? It aired Thursday at 8 PM. Miss it and you're out of luck until the rerun. Maybe.
You wanted money from your paycheck? The check had to clear. That took days. Sometimes a week.
You wanted to know something? You went to the library or waited until someone who knew could tell you.
You wanted music? You bought a CD for $15 and carried around a Discman that skipped if you moved too fast.
Now none of that exists.
TV shows drop entire seasons at once. Money transfers instantly. Any question can be answered in 10 seconds with a phone search. Music is unlimited and fits in your pocket.
We don't have to wait for anything anymore.
Which sounds great until you realize it completely destroyed our ability to be patient with things that actually matter.
The Problem With Getting Everything Now
I see this with clients all the time.
They want automation to fix their business processes. We have a discovery call. I explain it'll take two to three weeks to build and test the system properly.
Half of them get frustrated. "Can't we just do it faster?"
No. Because if we rush it, it breaks. Then we spend twice as long fixing it.
But they're used to instant results. Click a button, problem solved. That's how software is supposed to work now, right?
Except building good systems takes time. Testing takes time. Making sure it actually works takes time.
Same thing happens when I write. I'll publish a blog post and check the stats an hour later. Zero engagement. My brain immediately goes "this was a waste of time, nobody cares."
The post has been live for an hour. Of course nobody's seen it yet.
But I'm so used to instant feedback from social media that waiting even a day feels like failure.
We're Entitled Without Realizing It
Here's the uncomfortable part.
We've gotten so used to instant gratification that we think we deserve it.
New business not profitable in three months? "This isn't working."
Automation project taking two weeks instead of two days? "This is taking too long."
Fitness routine not showing results after three weeks? "I guess I'm just not cut out for this."
None of these timelines make sense. But they feel right because everything else in our lives is instant.
I do this constantly. Start a new marketing approach and expect results immediately. When they don't come, I assume it's not working and try something else.
Except most things that actually work take months to show results. I just don't have the patience to find out.
That's not strategy. That's entitlement dressed up as being data-driven.
What Restraint Actually Looks Like
I'm not going to tell you to embrace patience and practice gratitude and all that motivational nonsense.
What I will say is this: the stuff that actually matters takes time. And there's no way around that.
Building a business takes years, not months. Building good systems takes weeks, not days. Building skills takes practice, not a weekend course.
You can't speed that up by wanting it more or being frustrated about it.
A client spent six months manually tracking inventory before finally implementing the automation system we built. They kept saying "we'll do it next month" because implementation would take two weeks and they didn't want to disrupt operations.
Six months later, they'd wasted hundreds of hours on manual work. All to avoid a two-week implementation period.
They couldn't tolerate two weeks of short-term disruption. So they chose six months of ongoing pain instead.
That's what happens when you lose the ability to wait for things that are worth waiting for.
I'm Bad At This Too
Look, I'm not preaching from some enlightened place here.
I check my email constantly even though nothing urgent ever comes in. I refresh analytics obsessively even though traffic doesn't change minute to minute. I want client projects to close immediately even though sales cycles take weeks.
I know intellectually that good things take time. But emotionally, I'm wired for instant results now.
The difference is I'm trying to catch myself doing it.
When I want to check stats on a blog post I published two hours ago, I make myself wait. When I want to pivot strategy after one week because it's not working yet, I force myself to give it a month.
Not because I'm disciplined. Because I've watched myself kill good ideas too early by being impatient.
The Part Nobody Wants To Hear
Hard work still matters. Being patient still matters. Sticking with things that take time still matters.
All the instant gratification in the world hasn't changed that.
You can order food in 30 minutes and stream any movie instantly and get answers to any question in seconds.
But you still can't build something meaningful without putting in time.
The problem is we've trained ourselves to expect everything to work like Amazon delivery. Fast, easy, and exactly what we wanted.
Real work doesn't work that way. It's slow, it's messy, and half the time you're not sure it's working until months later.
If you can't tolerate that, you're going to struggle. Not because you're not smart or capable. Because you're optimizing for speed when you should be optimizing for results.
I'm still learning this. Still catching myself being impatient with things that require patience.
But I know the stuff I'm proud of took months or years to build. The stuff I rushed because I wanted instant results? None of that worked out.
You don't have to be patient. Nobody's making you wait anymore.
But maybe that's exactly why you should.