Patience
April 12th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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As simple as it seems, the virtue of patience is still one of the more powerful tools for personal growth. Sometimes directly working on a problem meets with nothing but resistance. In such situations attacking the resistance is rarely your best option. Consider putting the problem on hold for a while and go work on something else.
Sometimes the mere passage of time can help you solve a seemingly intractable problem. Technology will advance. Your knowledge and skills will increase. You may encounter unexpected luck. The need to resolve the problem may disappear. Getting away from the problem may give you a new perspective. Your confidence may increase by tackling some easier problems for a bit. Your subconscious may pop out a solution when you least expect it.
If this sounds like a recipe for procrastination, it is. Procrastination only becomes a problem when you put off working on what’s truly important to you and get sucked into wasting time. But it’s a valid tool when used to incubate a problem to make it easier and more efficient to solve.
When all else fails, be patient.
April 12th, 2005 at 5:47 am
I was going to say “Great, now I can just tell everyone I’m patient”, but then you threw in that last paragraph that kicked me back down to procrastinator.
April 12th, 2005 at 10:12 am
In the book Fermat’s Enigma by Simon Singh, Andrew Wiles, who devoted seven years to solving one of mathematics’ most intractable problems (quite a feat of personal productivity I’d say!) is quoted speaking of a similar creative procrastination:
“Basically it’s just a matter of thinking. Often you write something down to clarify your thoughts, but not necessarily. In particular, when you’ve reached a real impasse, when there’s a real problem that you want to overcome, then the routine kind of mathematical thinking is of no use to you. Leading up to that kind of new idea there has to be a long period of tremedous focus on the problem without any distraction. You have to really think about nothing but that problem–just concentrate on it. Then you stop. Afterward there seems to be kind of a period of relaxation during which the subconscious appears to take over, and it’s during that time that some new insight comes.”