Patience, hard work, and perseverance - no other way to success
I am not a very patience person. It was probably worse 10 years ago. Somehow, as I age, it comes wisdom. Wisdom to know when I need to wait and when I need to have patience. I guess it has a lot to do with how our lives have changed rapidly in just a decade time. I used to remember my childhood as a period where I am a very impatience person. I wanted quick wins in many things that I do. As time progresses and technology advances, I realized that my childhood impatience character got worsen. Technologies have given all of us knowledge at our fingertips and I realized that we constantly have the mentality of ‘fast food’ in everything we do.
One most vivid example of my lack of patience is replying to email. In the past, I have the habit of ‘instantly’ reply my email. I don’t know why. Whenever I receive an email, I have this strong urge in me to immediately reply. Often, I become a slave to email and worse is when my reply has complicated the matters more instead of helping. I have tons of painful experiences in this regard. At work, I have little patience with things that don’t start producing the results that I expect. In such situation, I often tends to bulldozer my way though. I remembered in my earlier years as a Manager in Registrar Office, I have made many mistakes and many enemies as a result of me being impatience for results.
Looking at people around me, I realized this problem is rampant across everyone I meet. Take for instance, as Resident fellow, I have the privilege of working with many young and talented minds. The common trait that I see in them is they want results fast. I can recall one such example. During one of the lunch meeting with Vice Dean (Graduate Division), School of Computing, several young PhD students commented that the time taken to complete a PhD in SoC is far too long than the time taken for a PhD in Engineering. Furthermore, the qualifying exams in Engineering is a lot easier than SoC. I was taken aback by these thoughts of our younger generations who are going to be the thought leaders of our future. I mean, we are taking about the pinnacle of education (obtaining a PhD). Surely, the focus cannot be on getting it fast. I can understand undergraduate studies where young people just want to get out there and earn big bucks. But a PhD candidate? I can’t understand. Shouldn’t you be taking as much time as you can to develop all the core skills you need to survive as an academic instead of trying to just graduate quickly? Is the title really that important especially when you haven’t master the skills?
In more recent years, I have learned two virtues about patience. I think these have served me well thus far and I hope by sharing it you can learn from it too.
(1) The first virtue about patience is “Some time you just need to wait it out and things will be resolved by itself“. An impulsive reaction some time provokes aggressive reaction that will only make matters worst. I learned that it is ok for us to let any matter simmer a while and if it is not resolved yet, then you reply.
(2) The second virtue about patience is “Good things take time to develop, keep doing it“. This virtue is best illustrated using training for a marathon as an example. If you are never a marathoner and you want to become a marathoner, you need to train progressively and patiently. Good things take time to develop and hence for as long as you keep doing it, you will improve day by day until you meet your goals. Now, you may say that you are not a marathoner and my example is inappropriate. Is it? How about changing the word to a word that describe your dreams? If you are never a ‘millionaire’ and you want to become a ‘millionaire’ … you see the picture.
Nothing in life that is worth pursing comes easy. It requires patience, hard work and perseverance to accomplish it. These are the two virtues of patience that have served me well in more recent years. I hope it will serve you well too.
