I’m going to start this post with a little lesson I learned from Marty, my brother, who has spent most of his career in city planning. 

There are different types of roads. 

Arterial roads are like the main highways or big streets in a city. Everybody goes on them. They carry lots of people going long distances.

Collector roads connect neighborhoods to the big arterials. Everybody goes by them. They collect traffic from smaller streets and feed it into the bigger ones. 

Local roads are the small streets where you live. Usually, only you go on them — the people who live there or are visiting.

Last Thursday morning, I was driving in morning traffic to a destination that should have been 45 minutes away.  

I was driving on local roads, to a collector road, and eventually onto a freeway.  

I know how unpredictable traffic in my area can be, so I usually check with Siri to make sure that traffic is flowing normally. On this particular Thursday I quickly learned that traffic was not flowing normally. Siri was telling me it was going to take at least an hour to get where I was going. 

So, I followed her instructions to go a different way. It took me to a different freeway entrance but by the time I got to that entrance I could tell that the traffic on the freeway was backed up and at a standstill. She still told me to get on. 

With the confidence of someone who has been wronged by Siri before, I didn’t believe her. 

I decided to take a collector road and head towards the next freeway exit. This particular collector road runs up a hill parallel to the freeway.  Once firmly on the collector road and about a half a mile up the hill (and feeling pretty proud of myself), I could see to my left that the freeway had cleared. 

And now I was (capital S) Stuck on a one-lane collector road behind many, many other people who had the same impatience that I had. It ended up costing me at least another 30 minutes to not listen to Siri. 

She could see down the road and I couldn’t. 

She could see that the freeway was going to clear up and all I could see were brake lights. 

My assumption was that the freeway was backed up for miles. 

It wasn’t. 

Now, we could make a spiritual analogy here about how God can see the future and we can’t. I’m going to assume you already know that lesson. But what I’d like to dig into today is my impatience that led to my unfortunate decision.

Jim Stone, Ph.D., says this about impatience:

We suffer impatience when 1) we have a goal, 2) we have accepted certain costs (including opportunity costs) for reaching the goal, 3) we learn that it’s going to cost us more than we thought to reach the goal, and 4) we start looking for ways to avoid having to pay those extra costs.

So good, right?

In my case that Thursday morning:

1) I had a goal: getting to my destination.

2) I had accepted certain costs: going during morning traffic.
3) I learned that it was going to cost me more than I thought to reach the goal: at least 15 minutes extra.
4) I started looking for ways to avoid having to pay that extra cost: I took a collector road instead of staying on the main artery.

Mr. Stone goes on to say this, “So, when does impatience serve us well? And when does it serve us poorly”

Impatience is good when:

• It motivates us to learn the full costs of reaching our goal.
• It motivates us to find ways to reduce the costs of working toward our goal.
• It motivates us to switch to a better goal (this is sometimes good).
• It motivates us to understand our options better.

Impatience is bad when:

• our original goal is worth sticking to, and we switch goals instead.
• We stick to our original goal but our constant search for alternatives distracts us from our work.
• We become impatient too often, and our lives are filled with a lot of unnecessary agitation, second-guessing, and bad decisions.

“Impatience can serve us well at times. And that helps us understand why the emotion of impatience is part of our standard emotional repertoire.

But sometimes it costs us.”

The truth that hit home to me as I was sitting on that collector road watching the freeway traffic whiz by me that morning is this: learning to wait through the discomfort can be the shortest path.

Learning to wait through the discomfort can be the shortest path.

How do we get better at impatience?
Here are Mr. Stone’s tips to try:

1. Take a deep breath.
2. Identify which goal is being frustrated.
3. Identify how the perceived costs of reaching that goal have risen.
4. Decide, calmly and rationally, whether you should 1) try to find a shortcut, 2) switch goals, or 3) settle in and come to peace with the situation.
5. If you have decided to settle in and come to peace with the situation, then accept the increased costs, and change your mindset. 

Which is exactly what I did. I found something I wanted to listen to. I let the appropriate people know I would be later than I anticipated. I enjoyed the sunshine. And I took this picture of some hang gliders while my car was standing still.  

I can’t wait to hear about how you might be looking at impatience a little differently, and if you need any help navigating it, I’d love to help you get where you’re going. (See what I did there?)

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PS If you liked this post – or any others, I’d love you to pass me and my work on to a friend.  They can find out much more about me here if they’re interested!