The Value of Patience

Social Media has recently accelerated a trend that has been an issue for a very long time: the feeling that people want things very quickly and have no wish to wait.  Immediate gratification has never been easier to achieve with the availability of very fast delivery of virtually anything that we desire.  However, the need for patience is as important as ever in many areas.

We would not expect to go to the gym once and be in shape right away or able to lift hundreds of pounds of weights.  Nor would we expect to lose a large amount of weight when we first start a new diet but that does not seem to extend to success and making money.  For some reason making money and having new things is something many people think you can accelerate to the point where it can happen very quickly. 

Warren Buffett is famous for saying that in investing and success you should have the same mentality as a farmer.  When a farmer plants seeds, they do not check if the plant is growing every day.  They know that they need to prudently take care of the seeds, water and fertilize them and wait for them to grow.  Then comes patience where you trust that you have done all you can do and hopefully the seeds grow into plants.

There is a famous yet controversial experiment called the Marshmallow Experiment.  In this experiment, children are offered one marshmallow (or pretzel if they preferred) immediately, or 2 marshmallows if they waited a small amount of time.  This was to test if the children had the ability to delay gratification. 

It was found that the children who were able to wait scored higher on aptitude tests, went further in their education, had a lower BMI and made much more money and had a higher net worth later in life.  This study was controversial because it was felt that other factors like the children’s economic background played a substantial part in their reactions.  If they came from more affluent areas, they were found to be able to delay gratification longer.

This makes sense as someone who was used to more abundance would probably be more likely to have the patience to wait for something better.  Those from lower economic backgrounds would be used to having to get what they could when it was available and waiting might be detrimental to them getting anything at all.

However, this does not completely invalidate the study.  Rather it suggests that those that are not used to abundance will have to work harder on their patience and delayed gratification.  Making a prudent investment and then having the patience to wait for it to increase in value has been proven time and again to be a superior method of investing over day trading and quickly buying and selling stocks.

The same is true for new businesses and ventures.  With the advent of the internet it is easier than ever to start a new business and make money, but many people feel that success should come very quickly.  Whether you start a business on the internet or in a physical store, patience coupled with good marketing, hard work and great service will be required if the business has a hope of being successful.

It can take years for even a good business to become profitable but the wait can be worth it.  Amazon was not profitable for many years in part because Jeff Bezos put all revenue back into the company to make it more competitive and better at providing value to its customers and that strategy paid off enormously. 

Patience in business and in life may at times be hard but in the end it is very often worth the wait.