The Art of Patience: Why Your Impatience is Killing Your Career (And How I Learnt This the Hard Way)

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Here's something that'll ruffle a few feathers: patience isn't just a virtue anymore – it's the secret weapon that separates the legends from the also-rans in Australian business. And before you roll your eyes thinking this is another mindfulness guru preaching from their meditation cushion, let me tell you why I'm qualified to bang on about this.

Fifteen years ago, I was the most impatient bastard you'd ever meet in a boardroom. Quick decisions, rapid-fire responses, always three steps ahead of everyone else. Thought I was brilliant. Turns out I was just another caffeine-fuelled idiot making expensive mistakes.

The Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything

Picture this: Melbourne, 2019. Major client presentation. Six months of work on the line. I'm sitting across from their CEO, and she's taking her sweet time reading through our proposal. The silence stretches. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two minutes.

Old me would've started talking. Filling the void. Explaining every bloody detail until her ears bled.

Instead, I waited.

She finally looked up and said, "This is exactly what we need. When can you start?"

That moment taught me something fundamental about patience that no business school ever mentioned: it's not about sitting quietly and twiddling your thumbs. Real patience is strategic. It's weaponised waiting.

Why Australian Workplaces Are Addicted to Speed

We've got this obsession in Australia with being "switched on" and "moving fast." Fair dinkum, walk into any office in Sydney or Brisbane and you'll see people bouncing off the walls, responding to emails before they've finished reading them, interrupting each other in meetings like it's some kind of contact sport.

Here's the thing that drives me mental: we confuse urgency with importance. Just because your phone buzzes doesn't mean the world's on fire.

I was recently working with a manufacturing company in Perth – brilliant operation, top-notch team – but their production manager was losing his mind trying to respond to every supplier inquiry within five minutes. Five bloody minutes! Meanwhile, his actual production line was running 15% below capacity because he couldn't focus on the big picture.

Patience gave him back three hours a day. Not kidding.

The Three Types of Patience That'll Transform Your Business

Look, I'm not talking about becoming some zen master who floats around the office humming mantras. I'm talking about strategic patience that delivers results.

Type One: Decision Patience

Stop making decisions when you're stressed, tired, or under pressure from some deadline that probably isn't as urgent as everyone thinks. The best business leaders I know – and I've worked with CEOs from Qantas to Woolworths – they all share this trait: they pause before big decisions.

Not forever. Just long enough to think properly.

I once watched a mining executive sit on a $50 million equipment purchase for three weeks while his team was practically hyperventilating about "missing the window." He saved the company $8 million by waiting for better intel on market conditions. That's the kind of patience that builds empires.

Type Two: People Patience

Your team isn't trying to annoy you. Well, mostly they're not. That guy who asks the same question three different ways? He's processing. The woman who needs two days to respond to your "urgent" email? She might be dealing with something you know nothing about.

Here's where I stuffed up royally back in 2017. Had this brilliant analyst on my team – absolute gun with numbers – but she drove me crazy because she never spoke up in meetings. Always needed time to "think about it."

So naturally, I started pressuring her for immediate responses. Brilliant move, right? Within six months, she'd transferred to another department. Took me another year to realise I'd lost one of the sharpest minds in the company because I couldn't wait thirty seconds for her to formulate her thoughts.

Type Three: Market Patience

Every industry has cycles. Property, tech, manufacturing, retail – they all go up and down like a bloody yo-yo. The patient players survive. The impatient ones get wiped out when the market turns.

I know a restaurant owner in Adelaide who spent eighteen months looking for the right location while his mates were opening three venues each. His single restaurant now outperforms all their operations combined. Why? Because he waited for the perfect spot instead of settling for "good enough."

The Impatience Epidemic (And How It's Costing You Money)

Research from Melbourne Business School shows that 67% of major business failures involve decisions made under unnecessary time pressure. Sixty-seven percent! That's not a small margin for error – that's a bloody epidemic.

We're so terrified of missing opportunities that we're creating disasters.

Think about the last bad hire you made. Bet you rushed the process because you "needed someone urgently." How much did that cost you in training, productivity loss, and eventual replacement? Probably more than waiting another month for the right candidate.

Same goes for client relationships. How many deals have you lost because you pushed too hard, too fast? I'll bet it's more than you'd like to admit.

Practical Patience: The 48-Hour Rule

Here's something I implement with every client, and it works like gangbusters: the 48-hour rule for non-emergency decisions.

Not forty-eight hours of analysis paralysis. Forty-eight hours of breathing space.

When someone comes to you with an "urgent" decision, ask yourself: "What happens if we decide this on Thursday instead of Tuesday?" Usually, the answer is "absolutely nothing."

This rule has saved my clients from countless expensive mistakes. Software purchases that would've been obsolete within six months. Partnerships with companies that folded three weeks later. Marketing campaigns that would've bombed spectacularly.

The beauty of the 48-hour rule is that it separates real urgency from manufactured urgency. Emergency surgery? Urgent. Choosing between two suppliers who've both been in business for twenty years? Not so much.

Why Your Competition Loves Your Impatience

Your biggest competitors aren't necessarily smarter than you. They're just more patient.

While you're rushing to respond to every RFP that crosses your desk, they're choosing their battles carefully. While you're launching half-baked products because "we need to get to market first," they're perfecting their offering.

I worked with a tech startup in Brisbane that was absolutely obsessed with beating their competitors to market. They launched their app six months before anyone else. Know what happened? It was buggy, the user experience was terrible, and their competitors learned from every mistake.

The patient competitor launched a year later with a superior product and captured 70% of the market within eighteen months.

Sometimes being second is better than being first. Sometimes being third is even better than being second.

The Patience Paradox: Moving Faster by Slowing Down

Here's the bit that'll cook your noodle: developing patience actually makes you faster in the long run.

When you stop rushing decisions, you make better ones. Better decisions mean fewer mistakes. Fewer mistakes mean less time fixing problems. Less time fixing problems means more time for productive work.

It's like that old saying about chopping wood: spend five minutes sharpening your axe, and you'll chop more wood in an hour than someone who hacks away with a blunt blade for two hours.

Patience is your axe sharpener.

Building Your Patience Muscle (Without Becoming a Pushover)

Don't get me wrong – I'm not suggesting you become some passive doormat who never makes a decision. Strategic patience is active, not passive.

Start small. Next time someone asks for an immediate response to something non-critical, say: "Let me think about that and get back to you this afternoon." Watch how often that "urgent" request suddenly becomes less urgent.

Question deadlines. Half the deadlines in business are completely arbitrary. Someone picked a date out of thin air, and now it's treated like gospel. Ask: "What's driving this timeline?" You'll be amazed how often there's no real reason.

Embrace awkward silences. In negotiations, presentations, difficult conversations – silence is your friend. The person who speaks first often loses. Let the other party fill the void. You'll learn more in those uncomfortable moments than in hours of small talk.

Look, I'll be straight with you: developing patience is harder than developing any other business skill because it goes against every instinct we have. We want results now. We want answers now. We want success now.

But the most successful people I know – and I've worked with everyone from corner shop owners to ASX-listed CEOs – they've all learned that sometimes the best action is no action. Sometimes the smartest move is waiting for the right move.

Your impatience isn't making you efficient. It's making you expensive.

The art of patience isn't about being slow. It's about being smart enough to know when fast isn't better.

And that, my friends, is the difference between being busy and being successful.