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Impatience can make you fail in two ways: you can establish an unsustainable tempo and fail because you can’t support it, or give up because your progress rate is too slow and you don’t want to wait any longer. Let’s address the latter problem first and then come back to the former.
We’ve already covered that what matters is accomplishing your goal — period — and not how long it took you to reach it.
Of course, it’s frustrating when things take longer than you expected, but if you give up because your progress is too slow, then you won’t make your dream come true at all. Does it really matter that it will take you longer?
Don’t obsess over deadlines. Rough estimates can be helpful, but they can’t dictate your life.
When I was 18, I set a goal to achieve financial independence within 7 years. In the end, it took me 9 years. Did I fail? Should I have given up after 7 years because (back then) nothing indicated that I’d reach my goal just two years later?
What’s better: achieving your goal two years later than previously planned or not achieving it at all?
I used to follow this illogical thinking process — and consequently failed numerous times — with a fitness goal of mine.
I assumed it wouldn’t take me more than 3 months to drop enough body fat to reach visible abs. After 3 months, I was still a long way from reaching the goal and I’d give up, frustrated that I hadn’t achieved it. Looking back, it made no sense — even if it took me two years to achieve this goal, it would still be a success. I obsessed about the deadline, while in reality the timeframe wasn’t important — reaching the goal was.
Try to focus on the tiny wins you get on a daily basis and remind yourself that even if you’re crawling, you’re still getting closer to your goal.
Obviously, if you have a goal that must be achieved by a certain date (such as preparing yourself for an important exam next week), this advice doesn’t apply. Finishing your preparations for an exam a week after its date serves little to no purpose. If the deadline is key, slow progress can indeed make you fail. In such a case, apply the Ultimate Focus Strategy to the extreme: eliminate every single distraction and double down on your key objective to ensure that you reach it on time.
Usually deadline-oriented goals are relatively short-term, so it’s possible to throw your life out of balance for a while to ensure that you accomplish the goal. Make sure it’s an exception, though — living your life without balance in the long term brings more problems than benefits.
Another pitfall to avoid is comparing yourself to others and consequently becoming frustrated that, despite working so hard, you still can’t match the performance of those other people.
Back in the day, when I started my journey with bodybuilding, I used to train with a friend. I came up with an idea to build a basement gym and researched what kind of equipment would be needed to perform an effective workout. I spent hours reading about nutrition and general fitness advice. I designed a workout plan and made sure we were performing the exercises properly.
Yet, despite me putting in so much effort, it was my friend — who often missed workouts, never read any articles about bodybuilding and fueled his workouts with Coke and potato chips — who transformed his body and looked like a person who actually went to the gym. Me? Even several years later, I still hadn’t reached the physique my friend had developed within less than a year without putting much effort or making sacrifices.
Because of this experience of mine (and other similar experiences, too), I fully empathize with people who feel angry because no matter how hard they try, they still fail while others succeed with virtually no effort. Such apparent unfairness can understandably lead to discouragement.
I largely freed myself from feeling frustrated about it by making myself realize — and repeating it over and over in my head until it stuck — that life is not fair. Some people have it easier while some have it harder. Don’t despair, though. It doesn’t mean that some people suck at everything and some succeed with everything. All of us have a different set of strengths and weaknesses.
When I went to a trampoline park with my other friend (who’s also my rock climbing partner) a couple of times, he was able to do a backflip during our second session. I, on the other hand — even after watching several detailed videos about how to perform a backflip and numerous attempts — couldn’t do it.
On our last visit to the trampoline park, I actually performed it so badly while jumping into a foam pool that my shin hit against the hard, wooden edge of the pool. I still have the scar to remind me of the accident.
You could say, “That’s so unfair. You clearly put more effort into it and you not only didn’t succeed, but you also injured yourself.” And you’d be right, except that when we go rock climbing, it’s me who can naturally perform some moves that my friend can’t. My and his strengths simply lie in different places.
When you feel frustrated that you’re trying so hard but you still fail, remind yourself that there’s probably another strength of yours that makes other people feel frustrated that it’s so easy for you.
Another way to deal with this problem is to reframe your struggles. If you aren’t good at something, you’ll probably put more effort into it. Consequently, if you stick to it long enough, sooner or later you’ll probably perform at least as well as the natural who seems to achieve everything so easily. Yes, you might suffer a lot during the process and it might take you a long time, but in the end, a weakness can be a blessing in disguise. Likewise, a natural strength — if you take it for granted — can be a curse.
I used to be an extremely insecure person with virtually non-existent social skills. Every naturally confident man always had it easier than me, but thanks to my effort and determination, I changed as a person and improved every aspect of my life. I’m not sure where I would be if it weren’t for this “unfair” weakness that had crippled my life for so long.
Instead of merely relying on one’s looks or natural social abilities, a shy person who is willing to change can eventually become a better “deal.” Over the longer term, would an attractive woman interested in a serious relationship be more interested in a handsome “natural” who doesn’t offer much substance beyond his looks and smooth talk, or a person who has invested years of his life to build confidence, develop powerful communication skills, and constantly improves himself?
EMPOWERING STORY #5: JIM PAUL
Ever since he was nine and got his first job as a caddy at a local golf club, Jim Paul knew that he would get rich. It wasn’t important how he would do that; what was important was how much. As he used to say, “It wasn’t what you did for a living that was important in life; it was how much you got paid for doing it.[27]”
Within the next three decades, he would go from being a nine-year-old making pennies to crossing $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, and $100,000 in daily earnings from successful trades.
He was making great money, spending most of his income on frivolous purchases, and living large, just like he had imagined as a nine-year-old caddy.
Deeply convinced of his trading abilities, in 1983 he bet it all on a speculation in the soybean market. Over the next few months, he would lose 1.6 million dollars — $400,000 of which he borrowed from friends.
Jim Paul spent the rest of the decade recovering from his failure. In his book. What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars (originally published in 1994), he admits responsibility for his failure and recounts lessons learned from this event that led him to an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
Most notably, he points out that, “Personalizing successes sets people up for disastrous failure. They begin to treat the success as a personal reflection, rather than the result of capitalizing on a good opportunity, being at the right place at the right time, or even being just plain lucky. People begin to think their mere involvement in the undertaking guarantees success.[28]”
Ultimately, overconfidence led Jim Paul to a spectacular failure. In the end, his failure taught him that he wasn’t a good trader, and he had to relearn the profession with humility. He managed to recover from his failure and has helped thousands of investors avoid a similar financial catastrophe, thanks to sharing his own painful lessons in his book.
If you’re impatient, you’re likely to set an unsustainable tempo from the get-go. While focusing on quick wins can work in the short term, burnout is almost guaranteed if you attempt to maintain a murderous tempo for a long period of time.
I know, I’ve been there many times.
I almost passed out in a sauna after neglecting my body’s warning signals, and got nicely rewarded with a nasty case of the common cold. Prior to that event, I went to a sauna at least twice a month; now I stay away from it.
After months of sticking to a crazy routine of writing 3,000 words a day, I got burned out so much that merely thinking about writing made me feel like throwing up. My disgust was so strong I was afraid I would never be able to write again.
When I got into rock climbing, I was so impatient to improve that I repeatedly ripped off the callouses on my fingers. Then, instead of climbing hard on the next workout I either had to take a few days off to let my fingers heal a little or I needed to tape them to avoid further damage. I also had a finger tendon injury that resulted in a six-week break from climbing.
I won’t lie. As unsustainable as some of my actions were, they helped me tremendously in the beginning. A short-term extreme approach can help, as long as you don’t plan to maintain it forever. Your risk of burnout is relatively low during the first couple of weeks, and greatly increases with each additional week of increased tempo.
Writing 3,000 words a day meant that I could write several short books each month — and learn a lot from each one. A hard, no-excuse approach to exercising at the gym and climbing like a mad man with ripped callouses helped me get tougher. But in the end, I too had to transition into something more sustainable.
Now I write 1,000 words a day. That’s a sustainable tempo that helps me achieve a lot without the risk of another burnout. Even if I believe I could write another 1,000 or 2,000 words, I stop myself right after accomplishing my daily word quota, because overextending myself on any given day can affect my sustainable routine.
I no longer practice several sports at once. I also pay more attention to proper recovery. Sometimes I take a few days off so that when I return my body is fully recharged. Then my performance is actually better than if I had continued working out with no such recovery period.
My hands got tougher and nowadays I rarely rip my skin off. However, I also pay close attention to my body’s signals and back out whenever I feel there’s an increased risk of an injury. Prioritizing long-term improvement over carelessly overtaxing my body leads to sustainable year-round progress.
If you frequently fail because you focus too much on the short-term unsustainable results, try to shift your outlook and embrace a long-term approach. Focus on building a chain of small improvements that you can make on a regular basis, rather than working yourself into the ground, deluding yourself that you can keep such a pace forever. As Zig Ziglar said, “It’s not what you do every once in a while; it’s what you do on a daily basis that makes the difference.”
You can train extremely hard from time to time, but if you repeatedly overuse your body and never give it an opportunity to fully recover, there’s a higher chance that you’ll injure yourself, which won’t improve your performance.
You can work 16-hour workdays every now and then if it’s really needed, but if you do it consistently, the only reward you’ll get will be lower creativity and overall lower productivity. In the end, instead of achieving more, you’ll only achieve burnout, lose important relationships, and ruin your health.
Is it really worth it? More to the point, does it really get you to your goal?
There’s a reason why the bodies of marathoners are completely different than the bodies of sprinters — you either focus on short bursts of high-intensity activity or you specialize in maintaining low-intensity activity over a long period of time.
If you’re impatient by nature, I have bad news for you: most goals require the marathoner’s approach. While you can kick things off with a short sprint, eventually you’ll have to transition into a more sustainable tempo and temper your impetuousness.
If I were to offer you two investments — one with a 20% return and another with a 7% return — which would you choose? Obviously, you’d go with the former, wouldn’t you? 20% is better than 7%.
What if I told you that the 20% return comes with a 20% risk of losing all of your money while the 7% return comes with a 1% risk of this unfavorable scenario?
In probability theory, expected value (EV) is the sum of all possible values for a random variable, each multiplied by its probability of occurrence. Poker players use EV to calculate their expected profit and make mathematically correct bets. You can use it to make better long-term decisions.[29]
20% risk doesn’t sound that bad, does it? Let’s calculate the expected value for an investment of $1,000 and see if it’s a good approach.
With the first option, 20% of the time you’d lose $1000 and 80% of the time you’d make $200. Let’s calculate the EV:
20% x ($1000) = ($200)
80% x $200 = $160
($200) + $160 = ($40)
EV = -$40
A negative EV means that over the long run you’re guaranteed to lose more than you would gain. Whenever you’re choosing fast, unsustainable results, you’re going with the risky option — and now you have the math to prove it. Your potential returns are higher, but in the long term, it’s a bad bet because eventually you’re guaranteed to lose.
Now let’s compare it with the safer option of the 7% return with a 1% risk.
1% of the time you’d lose $1000 and 99% of the time you’d make $70.
1% x ($1000) = ($10)
99% x $70 = $69.3
($10) + $69.3 = $59.3
EV = $59.3
A positive EV means that over the long run you’re mathematically guaranteed to win, and that’s the investment option you should choose, despite 20% returns sounding much more attractive. This is how maintaining a sustainable tempo works in the long term. It might not be as glamorous as working yourself to bone, but it’s what produces consistent results.
1. People often fail because they’re impatient. They’ll either give up, frustrated by the slow progress, or they’ll set an unsustainable tempo, anxious to succeed as quickly as possible. In both cases, failure is more likely than success.
2. If you often fail because slow progress discourages you, focus on reaching the goal itself, not on reaching it within a made-up deadline. Deadlines should be rough estimates; they can’t dictate your life.
Be careful not to compare yourself to others or get angry that you fail while others succeed. You might not be as good as others in one thing, but outperform them in something else. Also, if you have it harder, you’ll most likely put more effort into it. Over the long term, you have a high chance of outperforming the ones who take their talents for granted.
3. If you fail because you’re so anxious to reach your goal that you follow an unsustainable routine, understand the difference between sprinting and marathoning.
A brief sprint might be extremely helpful to gain initial momentum with a new goal. Here’s the thing, though: it needs to be a brief sprint, not a long-term strategy.
After a certain period of time (such as a few weeks, or perhaps a few months), you need to transition into a more sustainable routine, particularly for big goals that take years to achieve. In the end, it’s all about what you do on a daily basis, not every now and then. Little steps made daily and consistently are better than crash and burn undertakings.
