
Impatience: The Pitfall of Every Ambitious Person - endisukaj
http://dariusforoux.com/impatience/
======
keiferski
I'm a big fan of both Robert Greene's _Mastery_ and Leonardo da Vinci, but I
think using da Vinci as an example of patience is fairly misleading. After
having read numerous biographies on the man, my conclusion is that it's
remarkable that he managed to get as much done as he did. He was the ultimate
dabbler, interested in and curious about virtually everything. His works took
a long time to complete because he generally was distracted by some minor
detail for years on end. If the ideal is productivity, then surely
Michelangelo is a far better role model.

Of course, the _real_ question here is whether productivity is what one should
be ultimately aiming at. Doing _very few things very well_ (alternatively,
_creating a small number of high-quality things_ ) is a better ideal, to my
mind.

 _' It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole
book.'_ \- Friedrich Nietzsche

~~~
vog
_> Of course, the real question here is whether productivity is what one
should be ultimately aiming at._

This is a very good question also for the society as a whole. We are
technically able to sustain the whole population with a fewer and fewer
percentage of people working on holding up our living conditions (food, water,
heat, housing, network communication, etc.).

On top of that we (as a society) create lots of bullshit work which we again
try to perform as efficiently as possible. And as soon as productivity
increases, we work hard to create more demand for more of the same nonsense,
and if that doesn't work anymore, we invent a new type of bullshit.

Why are we doing that? (Well, I'm aware of the typical cynical answer:
reducing violence and crime, but there must be a better way to achieve this.)

What if we concentrate on improving our living conditions, and on top of that,
everyone who wants to work just picks their favourite problem and tries to
find a solution for it, valuing quality over being the first, valuing long-
term solutions over short-term minded crap?

~~~
have_faith
How do we decide who gets to be part of the leisure class and who gets to be
part of the working class? Assuming we decide that we cut the bullshit work
and let everyone not working live on something like UBI.

~~~
owebmaster
The working class would be the new upper class so a lot of people would try to
be part of it. Nice communist Utopia.

------
drdrey
Anecdote from my own running training: when I get impatient, I get injured.

There is this idea that if you can just get this hard workout done even though
you're not fully recovered, you will get closer to your goal. You hear the
siren song to be patient, skip the workout or make it an easy day, but choose
to push hard anyway. And so instead of missing one good training day, you have
to spend 4 weeks or more off of running.

And so everyday I have to remind myself to be patient, be consistent, and be
honest with myself.

~~~
ehnto
The worst injury I've done to myself at training was when I wasn't patient and
did deadlifts not long after a sprain. It's impossible to pinpoint the exact
moment you're okay to train again, and it will feel okay before it is okay.

------
lettergram
On the one hand - I agree you have to be patient in order to execute at the
right times. On the other hand, that's only in terms of timing...

You can't be patient and wait for opportunities. You have to be consistently
searching for them, and execute as you find them - staying as nimble as
possible.

For instance, I am always 100% invested, but always in various types of
assets. Some investments I can get my money out in 24 hours, others take weeks
or months to divest. That enables me to execute quickly when I see
opportunity, but only in a limited fashion.

I don't believe it's "impatience" that keeps me invested at that level. It's
the fact that, being idol does nothing.

Hell, I'm even platform around identifying new opportunities. I didn't / don't
want to be patient, so now I'm building something to enable faster decisions:

[https://projectpiglet.com](https://projectpiglet.com)

Kind of reminds me of a similar parable from the story Time Enough for Love by
Robert Heinlein, in it there was a man "too lazy to fail"[1]. The idea is
summed up by a quote:

> Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find
> easier ways to do something.

Ambition is just trying to accomplish things. In my opinion, it's impatience
that pushes us to solve problems, else we'd all settle for the way things are.
The trick, is learning to solve them in a way that mitigates risk. Which is
really what the author is trying to get at. Arrogance (or over confidence)
might be a better description of the pitfall, than impatience.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love#"The_Tale...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love#"The_Tale_of_the_Man_Who_Was_Too_Lazy_to_Fail")

------
taion
It's funny that he would take the famously lazy and impatient Leonardo as a
role model here.

Unless he thinks _The Last Supper_ is supposed to be like that.

~~~
labster
Laziness, impatience, and hubris enough to dabble in lots of fields. Leonardo
was truly a great hacker.

------
bitL
"If your work is not hard, you’re not doing great work." \- that sums up
German mentality :D

~~~
worldsayshi
There's a tendency to avoid the "boring" problems this way though. I find that
a bit in myself and others when it comes to software dev. A lot of problems in
software are of the boring kind. Establish convention and reinventing the
wheel rather than applying machine learning and coming up with brilliant
algorithms.

By avoiding or skipping over the boring problems i think you tend to miss a
lot of the bottlenecks for actually making something valuable.

~~~
lostcolony
But boring problems -are- hard problems. I find very little is 'hard' in the
sense of being difficult but ultimately overcomeable. Most things are either
impossible (but can be fun to think about), or rather simple but requiring a
lot of time (learning a new thing), or easy and quick (which we do and don't
think about), or easy but long, and thus boring. And it's these latter that
are, to me, 'hardest', because they're the ones I, and basically every one of
my colleagues, least want to do. But as you say, they also can be some of the
most valuable.

You mention machine learning and brilliant algorithms? Did you clean your
data? Did you refine the parameters to the algorithm? Did you try different
algorithms and compare? Machine learning is -boring-. Like, the things it
enables are exciting, once it's working it's exciting, but the process is
boring as hell. And I find that aspect every bit as 'hard' as understanding
the underlying math.

~~~
bitL
I think it's a bit more nuanced - it's a question of reward. If you know there
is hard+boring problem that needs to be done, the reward pops up immediately -
the problem doesn't look great on CV, so it's a net negative for your future
employeability comparing to (shallow) "fun" problems; is completion of such a
hard task going to be accompanied by significant equity or bonus and can you
trust manager/CEO promises about it (99% you can't), or at best you can hope
for a pat on the back and not being kicked out of the company once the
"boring" part is finished and is making money for the owners that don't want
to share anything with you? These things happen way too often in our
business...

------
ne01
> Look at it this way. You’ve spent enough time getting where you are — don’t
> screw it up by wanting to go too fast. Spend more time on your work. Take
> pride in it. That’s the only way we can do truly great work.

My favorite quote.

------
nickparker
Why is the story about investing in 2009-2011 in this post?

Unless they invested right in 2011, and your benchmark for "impatience" is
investing in late 2007, their accidental market timing probably lost them
money.

Plopping everything they made into some popular ETF when they made it probably
would've been better.

The only actionable advice I saw in here was journaling. Pure platitudes
otherwise, and as talon pointed out the examples aren't great.

~~~
dgreensp
I think the author was contrasting being a “fair-weather,” unknowledgeable
investor (in the stock market, or by analogy in prorjects) who buys in when
things are going up and pulls out when they go down, versus being a committed,
knowledgeable investor who waits for a specific opportunity.

~~~
almost_usual
The analogy makes sense but is much easier to see in hindsight. Plenty of
people during the Depression bought stock after they believed the market
bottomed out only to witness their wealth go to nothing because the market
continued shrinking after short periods of growth. It’s almost impossible to
know whether a crash has turned around when it’s happening.

Dollar cost averaging, diversifying assets, and keeping liquid on hand is
easier than trying to predict the market.

~~~
valuearb
Most who bought stocks after the 1929 crash and held made very good money
during the depression. The average dividend yield of the S&P index during the
1930s was about 7.8% per year.

------
hndamien
Impatience, greed and fear can be confusing bedfellows when investing.

------
cottrell
Lol. Anyone on an hourly rate should use this line to their fee-payer.

Rough heuristic is that in most projects, delay + downside-uncertainty = go-
nowhere failure/death. You need to chip away at one or the other with your
loop of actions to get anything done. Otherwise it is just luck.

------
matte_black
Ambition is the enemy of consistency.

Be consistent.

~~~
che_shirecat
consistently mediocre? what are you trying to say?

~~~
matte_black
Better to be consistently good and progressing in life than an ambitious
failure who tried to fly too close to the sun and failed and never amounted to
anything.

------
thundergolfer
As someone young, and highly ambitious, I've taken to seeking like-minded
peers by asking people where they'd like to be in 10 years.

It has the air of being a quite typical interview-y type question, though I
think it's useful to see, given youthful optimism and the astounding future
promise of our field (software + computing), just how many shy away from
declaring great personal hope and aspiration, seeing no place for themselves
in the future's next great achievements or assuming they will 'just happen'
around them.

It's a shot in the arm to actually hear someone young candidly express grand
aspirations whilst soberly embracing the year and years of toil those
aspirations demand. It galvanises me, and no matter how much work I've taken
on recently, makes me feel far less tired.

