The concept of not getting what I want right now, without having to wait, has been completely lost on me. I’m eager for the results, and a lot of the time, I lose any patience that’s required in order to get the results I want.

I blame it on my childhood.

Not because I was handed anything with a silver spoon, because anybody who knows me can tell you that my childhood was the exact opposite of that.

But what I did have as a child, and still do as an adult, is the ability to quickly pick things up and learn them. I participated in sports growing up, drew, wrote poetry and worked on computers.

No matter what I did, I learned quickly.

The bad thing is that this has bled over into my work life as an adult.

I can pick up a new piece of software, or technical skills needed to complete a task, like learning about API’s when building the Leafly Reviews plugin or releasing version 1.1 of the WP Dispensary plugin with API integration.

The time it takes for me to catch on is low, so I tend to look at everything in my life the same way.

If I can’t pick it up and learn it quickly, I get frustrated and move on.

If I can pick it up and learn it quickly, I get bored and move on.

Learning how to manage this has been rough, but it’s something I’m growing into every day.

Expecting the unexpected

One thing I’ve done to start exercising my strength when needing to have patience in situations is to expect the unexpected.

As a developer, I’ve had more than my share of hours wasted looking for a missing semicolon in my code; I’m sure we all have.

When I used to start projects, I would sit down and tell myself that it will be done quick and everything will go smooth from start to finish.

Experience has taught me that is complete bullshit and I have since started to expect things to go wrong during the process.

The results?

I start a project knowing that something will jump up and smack me in the face, but I’m comfortable with that.

If it does end up happening (it does, more often than not), I’ve followed the advice of Paulo Coelho and respect the process, finish strong and keep moving forward.

“I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.” – Paulo Coelho

Letting go of the things I cannot control, and putting complete focus on the things I can control has been a blessing.

Finding success in patience

We’ve all heard the “nothing happens overnight” statements, and see the debunking of the “overnight success” that in reality took years to accomplish.

The one thing I’ve learned while working on having more patience in my life is that it is an absolute requirement for long term success.

You can go viral, get a bunch of sales in, and then fall off the face of the planet a week later if you’re not prepared for the long haul.

Is that success? Sure, short term success is still success.

However, I’m more focused on long term success and building a business that I can be proud of, sustains my way of life and can help others in the process.

For this to happen, I need to remain focused, have patience and determination in order to succeed.

“Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.” – Napoleon Hill

I believe that mixing the patience required to succeed, with the right amount of hustle is a winning combination.

Only time will tell.