“Successful Investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” – Warren Buffet
Ahh, Warren, you are so smart!
I don’t know how many of you have nursed a baby to sleep, but it’s the perfect lesson in project management.
It can take 20 mins to a couple of hours to reach REM sleep depending on the age and sleep style of anyone over 3 months old.
Sometimes my son is super tired and he falls asleep almost immediately. Now, it can be super tempting to believe he’s good to sleep for awhile, but only a fool trusts want they want to believe as reality. Sure, there’s a chance it could work with so little effort, but most likely patience is needed.
When I am foolish or impatient (which is plenty of the time, I admit), things don’t work out how I want. Why? Because I didn’t go deep enough (or, in this metaphor, I didn’t wait for the baby to reach deep sleep and he wakes up) and I pay the price. What follows?
> Interruption (for everyone involved)
> Repetition of events not going as planned
> More effort than necessary
> Wasted time
> Mismanaged opportunity cost
Sound at all familiar?
Ever “finally” take care of something on your to-do list and sigh in relief…only to find out it didn’t go through and it requires you to do it again…and then you gave up completely?
Ever buy that thing you kept meaning to buy in a rush to “just get it done” and then find out it was the wrong size and now you need to go back and return it or buy another one?
Ever say, “it’s fine, I can eat this thing I’m allergic to just this once” and then spend hours asleep or in pain, missing whatever you were supposed to do?
Ever swear it would be fine to take a taxi because you were late for the train and then get caught in traffic and pay 10 times the price of the train?
You get the idea.
The key is to stay in and go deep.
That investment in those extra minutes of patience, which can also mean getting somewhere 15 minutes early and waiting, will pay you back ten-fold.
Joumor Principle: Follow up 5-12 times. Sometimes it’s actually 5-12 times, and sometimes those 5 or 12 times are the equivalent of 5-12 extra minutes on a 1-2 minute task. It’s about patience and follow through, and not giving up till you get the result you desire…especially when it’s easier to believe it is DONE.
Now we know that we don’t control much – Man Plans and God Laughs. But still, we can try! The timing might not be as you want it but one thing is for sure – if you think you’re done and quit before you have followed the task to completion, it will cost you way more time and money and effort than you have to spare.
Ok, and ready for this? The sad truth?
This is where many of us are- cleaning up the same unfinished projects for YEARS, chasing the same dreams that go nowhere, swearing we’re going to change but then doing so only a little…and then starting over again. And why? Because we didn’t have the patience to finish what we started…when we started.
It’s a beautiful irony that a friend of mine once summed up perfectly: Slow is fast and fast is slow.
Go slowly, deeper, and you’ll get there faster, better.