âImpatience is the feeling that time is moving at the wrong speedâtoo slowlyâand that we need to force it to move faster. But time moves at exactly the speed it moves, and our impatience changes nothing except our experience of it.â â Oliver Burkeman
Picture the scene: youâre stuck in traffic in a busy cityâNew York, Mumbai, SĂŁo Paulo. All around you, drivers are honking. Constant, insistent honking. But the traffic isnât moving. The honking accomplishes nothing. Everyone is stuck in exactly the same situation.
So why the honking? Burkeman suggests itâs a perfect symbol of modern impatience: the compulsive attempt to exert control over something we cannot control. The driver honking at traffic is trying to make time move faster, trying to force a situation beyond their power to change, trying to refuse the reality of constraint.
The honking does nothing except make the experience more stressful for everyone. Yet we do the psychological equivalent constantlyâhonking at time itself, demanding it move faster, refusing to accept things taking the time they take.
Where does this impatience come from? Burkeman traces it to our fundamental discomfort with not being in control.
When things move at a pace we chooseâwhen weâre in controlâwe feel fine. But when things move at their own pace, on their own timeline, we experience this as intolerable. Time is moving âtoo slowly.â Other people are taking âtoo long.â Processes arenât happening âfast enough.â
But notice the assumption embedded here: that things should move at the pace we want them to. That we have the right to expect reality to conform to our preferred timeline. That time moving at its own pace is somehow wrong.
This assumption is absurd when you state it explicitly. Of course reality doesnât conform to your preferences. Of course time moves at its own pace. Of course other people and processes have their own rhythms. But our emotional system acts as if we should be able to control it all.
Impatience isnât new, but technology has made it much worse. Every convenience technologyâevery tool that makes something faster or easierâparadoxically makes us more impatient about things that canât be sped up.
Before email, waiting days for a letter response was normal. Now, waiting an hour for an email reply feels interminable. Before GPS, getting lost was expected. Now, being delayed by a few minutes feels like a crisis. Before smartphones, waiting in line meant waiting. Now, even sixty seconds without stimulation feels unbearable.
Each convenience technology resets our baseline expectations. We come to expect that everything should be instantaneous, that all delays can be eliminated, that we should never have to wait. Then, when we encounter the many things that still take timeârelationships, personal growth, meaningful work, other peopleâs processesâwe experience intense impatience.
This creates what Burkeman calls the âimpatience spiralâ: convenience technologies make us more impatient, which makes waiting more painful, which drives us to seek more convenience technologies, which makes us even more impatient, and so on.
The more we optimize and streamline and speed up, the more intolerable any delay becomes. The faster our baseline pace, the more we feel weâre being held back when anything takes time. Weâre on a treadmill thatâs constantly speeding up, making us feel perpetually rushed and behind.
The promised relief never comes. Getting faster doesnât make us feel less impatientâit recalibrates our expectations so weâre impatient about everything that remains slow.
Chronic impatience has several corrosive effects on our lives:
It makes the present unbearable. When youâre impatient, youâre essentially rejecting the present moment, treating it as an obstacle to get through rather than life happening. Waiting in line, sitting in traffic, listening to someone talkâthese become suffering rather than simply experiences.
It prevents depth and quality. Meaningful things usually take time: deep conversation, creative work, building relationships, learning complex skills. Impatience makes us want to rush past the necessary time these things require, which means we never fully engage with them.
It poisons relationships. People can feel when youâre impatient with themâwhen youâre waiting for them to finish talking so you can say your thing, when youâre rushing them along, when you experience their pace as an obstacle to your agenda.
It creates perpetual stress. Impatience is essentially a state of constant resistance to reality. Reality moves at its own pace; your impatience demands it move faster. This creates continuous psychological friction and stress.
Burkeman suggests that our cultural impatience functions like an addiction. Weâre addicted to speed, to getting things done faster, to not having to wait. Like any addiction, it requires ever-increasing dosesâwe need things to be faster and faster to get the same feeling of satisfaction.
And like any addiction, the highs become briefer and the withdrawals become worse. The satisfaction of speed is fleeting; the agony of having to wait is intense. Weâre trapped in a cycle where we need more speed but can never get enough to feel satisfied.
So how do you escape the impatience spiral? Burkeman suggests it requires accepting a fundamental truth: things take the time they take.
This sounds simple, almost trite. But itâs radically counter-cultural. Our entire modern infrastructure is built on the premise that we can and should make things faster. Accepting that things take the time they take means giving up the fantasy of control over timeâs pace.
Patience isnât about gritting your teeth through waiting, enduring the unbearable. Thatâs just impatience youâre suppressing. True patience is about accepting that this is how long this takesâand that this is okay.
Notice the honking: Throughout your day, notice when youâre âhonking at trafficââbeing impatient with something outside your control. Stuck in line, waiting for a webpage to load, wanting a conversation to move faster. Just notice it.
Feel the resistance: Impatience is resistance to reality. Can you feel that resistance in your body? The tension, the urgency, the discomfort? What would it feel like to soften that resistance?
Practice âthis pace is the paceâ: When you notice impatience, try saying to yourself: âThis is how long this takes. This pace is the pace.â Not with resignation, but with acceptance. This is reality; your preference for it to be faster doesnât change it.
Choose one patience practice: Pick one regular situation where youâre always impatientâwaiting in line, sitting in traffic, waiting for your computerâand consciously practice accepting the pace. Use it as a reminder to soften your resistance to time.
Slow down deliberately: Occasionally do something deliberately slowlyâeating a meal, taking a walk, having a conversationânot because you have to, but as practice in accepting slower paces.
Hereâs the paradox: in an impatient culture, patience is a superpower. The person who can accept things taking the time they take has access to depth that impatient people donât.
They can have long conversations without rushing them. They can work on complex projects without needing quick results. They can build deep relationships that take years. They can pursue mastery that takes decades. They can be fully present in slow moments rather than constantly escaping into stimulation.
Impatient people miss all of this. Theyâre always somewhere elseâmentally in the future, when this slow thing will be done. They canât access the depth and richness that only emerges when you accept slow paces.
Think about the most meaningful parts of your life. How many of them could be rushed? Deep friendshipâcan it be rushed? Raising childrenâcan it be rushed? Creative masteryâcan it be rushed? Personal growthâcan it be rushed?
The things that matter most tend to be things that take time. Your impatience doesnât make them go faster. It only prevents you from being fully present with them while they unfold at their own necessary pace.
What would become possible if you could accept things taking the time they take?
Impatience is the demand that reality move faster than it does: like honking at traffic, itâs a futile attempt to control what we cannot control.
Convenience technologies create a paradoxical effect: making some things faster resets our expectations, making us more impatient about everything that remains slow.
The impatience spiral constantly accelerates: more speed creates higher expectations, which creates more impatience, which drives demand for more speed, endlessly.
Chronic impatience has corrosive costs: it makes the present unbearable, prevents depth and quality, poisons relationships, and creates perpetual stress.
Impatience functions like an addiction: requiring ever-increasing doses of speed, with briefer highs and worse withdrawals, never reaching lasting satisfaction.
Patience means accepting that things take the time they take: not gritting through waiting, but genuinely accepting realityâs paceâand in an impatient culture, this patience becomes a superpower.