Why Impatience is a Virtue: Stop Planning and Start Doing

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July 18, 2014
By Isaiah Hankel
13 Comments

Many impatient people feel guilty for the way they are. They see their haste as a character flaw. But the truth is, impatience is a virtue, not a vice.

People who don’t plan are rock stars. They live confident, fun and happy lives and rarely have a problem making big life decisions. Obsessive planners are the opposite. This is because obsessive planning and waiting to take action erodes your confidence and decision-making abilities.

Life is better when you think big and take action. (Click here to tweet this quote.) But not everyone feels this way. A lot of people rely on obligation, passivity and herd mentality to get things done. As a result, they don’t get things done.

They set up systems saturated with meetings and committees until all any employee can see is an endless string of plans and plans to make plans. This death-by-committee lifestyle is what turns action-taking employees into wait-and-see rodents.

Human or lemming?

Business and individuals who plan obsessively by default will move forward — like lemmings over a cliff.

Research on groupthink, or herd mentality, shows that humans and other animals like fish, buffalo and birds collectively respond to environmental changes with low levels of cognition. Large groups are often led, not by the proactive choices of each individual, but by a large collection of dull responses.

At the same time, self-esteem studies show that the more pressure someone feels to fit in, the less self-respect they have. And the less self-respect they have, the more pressure they feel to fit in.

The cycle of trying to fit in with the herd and hating yourself for it traps a lot of people. Obsessive planning starts this cycle. The only way to get off the hamster wheel is to set action-taking as your new default state. This means being willing to fail and act before you’re ready.

Taking action fixes mistakes

Many of the brightest minds in business have tried the Marshmallow Challenge. The challenge works like this: People are divided into teams of four. Each team is given 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti, a yard of tape, a yard of string and one marshmallow. Each team is given 18 minutes to build the tallest structure they can with marshmallow on top.

The results are surprising.

The worst performing groups include recent MBA graduates and CEOs of large organizations. One of the top performing groups is kindergarteners. Why?

The MBAs and CEO planned obsessively until time ran out, then hurried to build a tower of spaghetti and place a marshmallow on top, only to watch it crumble in the last second. The kindergarteners, being kids, took action and figured out what worked and what didn’t.

No plan survives contact with reality. Obsessive planning works against you in everything you do. Especially in today’s world. Things change too quickly. Testing is the new planning. And testing requires constant action-taking and constant adaptation.

Action is a virtue

Action-takers are the new superheroes. They leap big decisions in a single bound and land on their feet. Obsessive planners, on the other hand, are the villains. Prolonged study, deliberation and planning are often signs of weakness and insecurity, not wisdom and patience.

Planning is safe, which is why most people set it as their default state. They plan, then freeze, then plan some more — completely paralyzing themselves in the process. It’s far easier to talk about possible solutions to a big problem than to try out a solution.

Heroes rush in. Fools wait.

Waiting for the right moment or the right person is naïve. No one’s coming to pave a safe path to success for you. No one’s going to magically appear and pick you for greatness. Fairy godmothers don’t exist.

Stop waiting. Be an action-taker. Be a “rock-start” and a superhero. Make something big happen right now.

Dr. Isaiah Hankel is a scientist, international speaker, and author of Black Hole Focus. He works with Fortune 500 companies, startups, and individuals to help them develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Visit his website or find him on Twitter.

Brazen powers real-time, online events for leading organizations around the world. Our lifestyle and career blog, Brazen Life, offers fun and edgy ideas for ambitious professionals navigating the changing world of work.

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jrandom421

I have never heard of anything so ridiculous! Impatience a virtue? I guess you can’t wait for anything, including microwave popcorn!
I WANT IT NOW!! Too bad it depends other people, so you’ll have to wait for them.
Let’s face it: Even if you’re a “rock star”, you’re never going to be right 100% of the time. What happens when one of your instant impatient decisions gets people killed, costs the company millions of dollars, gets you indicted and arrested or publically makes you look like a racist, sexist, homophobic, clueless idiot that is guaranteed a visit from the Secret Service?
Something to think about, but I doubt you’ll take the time. I’ll be waiting to watch your latest impatient fail.
- http://isaiahhankel.com/ Isaiah Hankel, Ph.D.
  
  Great points here. I agree that it’s impossible to be right 100% of the time. This is why it’s important to not waste your life away planning. The key is to do your homework but not fall victim to “analysis by paralysis,” so to speak. The goal of this article is to inspire people to take positive action, not destructive action. There’s a clear difference between taking calculated risks and taking foolish risks.
  - jrandom421
    
    Impatience almost always implies impulsive action, which leads to foolish risks. You talk about calculated risks, but impatience prioritizes action over planning. By its very nature, impatience is a foolish risk.
    Perhaps you should have emphasized planned action, rather than misusing the word impatience. This is a great disservice to anyone who reads your words and takes them at face value.
- Marie
  
  I agree that this article takes the “virtue in action” point a little bit too far. Planners aren’t “villains”, by any stretch; they’ve just fallen into an extreme behavior pattern. By the same token, people who take action quickly aren’t “heroes”; too often, those are the people that muck things up–and put others in danger–via thoughtlessness. Both over-planning and under- planning are unwise extremes–and, I think, the truly wise know how to strike a balance in the middle.
Stan

You shouldn’t take impatience in a negative perspective. The word is negative if you take it literally. When you read between the lines, impatience can convert to initiative and perseverance to pursue your goals in life. If you just keep on waiting, there’s no magic that will bring you to magical land of great fortune. Have some spirit to plan and take action. I believe that’s what the writer is trying to say. IMO. Gotta go now, need to fix my resume now before it’s too late.
Aimee

Maybe jrandom421 should not be on a site called Brazen Life? Maybe his values are in direct conflict with the values of the content. It might be a perfect time to quote Brene Brown here and say – come out into the arena jrandome421
- jrandom421
  
  I’ve been on the receiving end of impatient thought and action. When I was a paratrooper, we were on a night training jump over Ft. Irwin in the Mojave desert. The jumpmaster thought the winds were too high for a safe training jump, but the platoon leader ignored his advice and ordered us to jump NOW, saying he wouldn’t wait another day to complete the training exercise. The 40 knot winds, with 60 knot gusts, dragged many of us jumping paratroopers along the ground at freeway speeds to hit rocks, before we could collapse or release our parachutes, killing and injuring many. i was injured and had to take a medical discharge because of this incident. Two of my best friends were killed. Even today, some 30 years later, after 15 surgeries and years of physical therapy, I still walk with a limp, and my left leg is 2 inches shorter than my right
  
  At his court-martial, the platoon leader vigorously defended his decision to send us out in unsafe conditions, saying that he was exercising his command authority to send us out there, that the situation called for action, not more planning and he acted accordingly. Needless to say, three general officers found him guilty of not only dereliction of duty, but manslaughter. He was released from US Military Disciplinary Barracks as a private with a dishonorable discharge 4 years ago.
  So forgive me it I don’t share those values of being impatient, because from my own experience, impatience can kill people and for me, that’s something to be avoided at all costs.
Susanne George Bell

Aimee I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who said it first, but yes very relevant to this post – Brene Brown quotes Theodore Roosevelt in her talk on shame “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt
Lowell Fiscus

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Impatience can be good on other people yet can also be bad in some other times.

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Reverse Phone Lookup, Screensavers, Wallpaper, Security
Hollywood752

This discussion brings to mind the Myers-Briggs inventory and the Perceiving and Judging dichotomy. The “Ps” aren’t about organizing the world and making decisions, they’re more about taking in information and are comfortable with ambiguity where the “J’s” are just the opposite – when they feel they have enough information, they pull the trigger and act. Neither is a better way, they’re just two ways of orienting to the outer world.
jrandom421

Here’s Dilbert’s take on this subject:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-03-26/
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Why Impatience is a Virtue: Stop Planning and Start Doing

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Why Impatience is a Virtue: Stop Planning and Start Doing

Human or lemming?

Taking action fixes mistakes

Action is a virtue

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