The Long Game

Patience.

It’s an incredible trait that far too many of us (especially myself) unfortunately lack. If you’re feeling down that you’re not nearly as patient as you want to be, there’s a good chance it’s not even your fault.

In the age of infinite scrolling and instant gratification, it’s damn near impossible to expect someone to show patience when they’re constantly sucked into the endless depths of the algorithms.

All that to say: we human beings are impatient as hell.

As many Gen Z-ers kick off their careers and enter the treacherous territory that is adulting - the woes of impatience begin to haunt us.

Whether we want to become skillful at a certain craft, learn a new language, make money, or understand what the hell NFTs are (seriously…it’s been like 7 months and I still don’t get it), we expect these things to happen immediately.

Yet, when you sit down with any person who has mastered their profession and found success, you realize the amount of hard work and patience they endured for years before they achieved their goals.

Goals and patience, however, are not enough to reach long-term success. The secret sauce to that lies in creating a system-based approach that focuses on building good habits and breaking bad ones.

Don’t take it from me though. Take it from James Clear, the author of the critically-acclaimed and best-selling book about creating systems: Atomic Habits. I won’t summarize the book since Ali Abdaal has done a way better job at that than I ever could.

One thing I will highlight from this book is the idea that building habits and practicing them consistently over long periods of time (i.e. years) literally acts like compound interest, which was bestowed the name of “eighth wonder of the world” by Albert Einstein. The more you practice those habits, the better you get at them, and your growth starts to look like an exponential line (as shown in Ali’s video above).

The reason this is so important is that the longer we are able to sustain these habits with patience, the better we will become down the line as a direct consequence. The interesting paradox about sustaining habits is that many people stop them because they don’t see results in the short term or they get bored with them. Yet, the benefits of those habits only appear after years of consistent practice.

We often fantasize about our most outlandish goals and daydream about what our perfect life would look like, right before we’re given a rude awakening as to how far away we actually are from achieving them.

Contrary to common belief, achieving success does not require you to pull all-nighters, work 80+ hours a week, and forget about your social life. What James Clear makes very clear (sorry I couldn’t help myself) is that we are capable of changing the trajectory of our lives to the better through minuscule habit changes that compound over time to yield exponential results.

Anyone is capable of achieving success. It requires only two things:

Consistency.

Patience.

Do that for long enough and you’ll be greeted by a new person next time you look in the mirror.

And if you remember nothing else from this post (thanks for reading by the way), then remember this quote by James Clear:

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I got some systems to build.