FIRE Aethernaut, Mr. Fate, explores the global pandemic of impatience, a near-ubiquitous cultural contagion, by examining its origins, implications, and mitigating strategies for those aspiring to financial independence or early retirement.
It’s 6am on Monday morning and you are apoplectic with rage as your vehicle sits motionless amid a sea of metal on the road. You fume over the imbecile that cut you off minutes ago while your lather of asperity further builds whilst simultaneously flipping through the infinite number of internet radio stations and texting all your friends how the precious gazingus pins you bought and overnighted from Amazon didn’t arrive as promised. Overarching all of this, is the fact that you will be late for work – again. How will you ever get that promotion to the top job within 2 years now? Why can all of it never come fast enough? Why?
IMPATIENCE IS A CONTAGION
The answer is quite simple. We, as a global society, are an impatient lot and becoming more so each and every day. Patience is no longer a virtue. In fact, sadly, it is no longer a reality. If, for some odd reason, you choose not to believe this, get a load of the results of this recent study:
- 96% of Americans knowingly consume extremely hot food or drink that burns their mouths rather than wait to let it cool
- 50% of people hang up the phone after being on hold for a minute or less
- 71% frequently exceed the speed limit to arrive at their destination faster
- Americans binge-watch an average of 7 TV episodes in one sitting
- People cannot go longer than 10 minutes without checking their phones
- 25% of Millennials when waiting for a table at a restaurant wait less than 1 minute before re-approaching the host
Without question, this is clearly a stratospheric-level of insanity at play. But just how did we manage to actually get here? As a cynic, it is equally tempting and effortless to launch into a screed that mercilessly slags our Millennial generation as the progenitors of this filthy contagion, but it is a trifle more complex than that. Sure, Millennials, like every generation before them, are guilty of their sundry crimes, but in the case of the culture of impatience, they are more the unwitting victims, just like everyone else.
In reality, the true culprit here is the acceleration of culture, pure & simple. In their book, “The Acceleration of Cultural Change,” authors Bentley & O’Brien describe how after millennia of local ancestral knowledge that evolved slowly, the transmission of culture has become vast and instantaneous. This, obviously has been hyper-accelerated by technology which has increased exponentially since the early 80s with the pervasive nature of an internet across people and devices.
GIMME, GIMME, GIMME!
Certainly, this technologically-enabled culture has been a tremendous boon to many extents. From a consumerism perspective, no one will argue that the near overabundance of products and services and the speed at which they can be produced and obtained is, inherently, a bad thing. Quite the opposite. Nevertheless, the unseemly byproduct is an impatience borne of instant gratification and impulsivity. A study from the University of Leeds claims that technology has driven us to regard delays as unacceptable and we have built an on-demand economy where any inefficiency is an inconvenience to be dealt with, as we continue to crave even faster delivery.
Yeah, Millennials are routinely documented as being more impatient than other generations, but it’s because they happened to be born as “digital natives.” The reality is that they have no other frame of reference outside of the current cultural norm, so they can bear no particular blame . So, irrespective of the generations, we, all of us, have disregarded community and the challenges of delayed gratification in favor of a consumer culture based on the expectations of individual satisfaction, instant gratification, and rapid acquisition.
YOU’RE TRYING TO EAT GRASS THAT ISN’T THERE
Now that we’ve isolated the legitimate cause and origin of our culture of impatience, we still have yet to tackle the true heart of the matter. My aim thus far is not to cast judgement on the current state of our culture, but to attempt to define the more substantive problems that result from it. First, it’s important to truly understand that impatience is, fundamentally, initiated when we realize than an expectation or goal exceeds the cost we originally thought it would. In the context of this article, cost is generally defined by time. Maybe another way of looking at it is a dissonance between individual perception and reality.
One can easily see how things can get maniacally distorted when one’s basis for all of life’s expectations are overly informed or altogether framed by the speed and abundance of the prevailing consumer culture. For example, because the consumer culture assures you that any style, cut, color, fabric, & pattern of shirt you may possibly want can be identified using the internet and be on your back within 1 day via express delivery does not mean things such as moving from an entry-level job to the CEO can or will occur in the same amount of time. Professional growth, maturity, skill development and experience are exempt from the consumer culture; in fact they transcend it. But everyone, including Mr. Fate, continually falls into this mental misapprehension which is the source for much unnecessary impatience and it’s adverse consequences.
A GRAVE DISORDER
Yeah, we all get that there are negative side-effects to impatience, but you’d be shocked at both the breadth and depth. Both impatience and instant gratification atrophy one’s ability to delay fulfillment which can lead to large-scale societal complications. An example is the staggering proliferation of diagnoses of attention deficit disorder for both children and adults in the past ten years. The cumulative effect being that society is losing its ability to focus. Shorter attention spans mean fewer people are reading books (the predominant way of becoming smart). In a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total daily reading levels are down, across all age groups, by 30% (nearly 40% for men). Irrespective of how one’s slices the data, reading in the U.S. is at an all time low.
Another interesting study has published results linking the relationship between impatience and telomere length. For you non-cytogeneticists, telomeres are the caps at the end of your chromosomes that protect your DNA from damage. As the study’s co-author pointedly stated “Impatience is linked to cognitive and social incompetence, inability to cope with life frustration and risk of mental disorders.” Oh yeah, don’t forget telomere length also correlates to life expectancy.
These are just two examples of large-scale societal problems associated with the contagion of a culture of impatience. Other studies by such entities as the American Medical Association, London Center for Economic Policy, & the Pew Research Center have concluded many other individual implications of impatience including:
- Irritation
- Hypertension
- Obesity
- Procrastination
- Alcohol & drug abuse
- Poor judgment
- Financial issues (most notably high debt)
- Loss of friendships and relationships
Empirical data and evidence-based research notwithstanding, I think poet Katerina Stoykova-Klemer puts it best when she says, “Impatience kills quickly.”
IF DEATH IS THE FINISH LINE, WHY ARE WE ALL SO EAGERLY SPRINTING TOWARD IT?
Once you begin to understand that your life is, in fact, not something you order and receive via Amazon Prime within 2 days, you’re almost there. And while it’s great I literally just did that 48 hours ago with the socks I’m wearing as I type this, the best and most meaningful things in life don’t work that way – not even close, champ. You can use a zillion dating sites, but you still have to put in the real effort, the real time, the real you to have a meaningful human relationship. The Interwebs can find you a job, but you still have to get it and then log days, months, years, likely decades before you are the CEO (or, more likely, not). Same thing with financial independence or early retirement or just life – success all comes down to “time in the market, not timing the market.” One does not get rich, or more importantly, live a rich life, quickly. In fact, life’s greatest joys are the absolute antithesis of the current and rapidly-evolving consumer culture.
“We all get the same thing, we each get a lifetime,” so there’s no need for haste or hurry or impatience. The universe will always eclipse us and our culture. Rushing exasperatingly toward that finish line, only means the end to the ride, so let’s be mindful, fulfilled and content with all that is now. Everything else will come soon enough.
When we take the time to truly realize that our journey is only one-way ticket long, perhaps that may be enough for us to shake this contagion of impatience and simply enjoy who we are and what we have today.