Impatience with time is a modern psychological issue. We tend to be impatient for things to happen. It goes from impatience with how a career is growing to impatience with car drivers who seem to be too slow.
What is our relationship with time and how does it affect our lives? In Nature, everything develops with pace. We evolve to be better adapted human beings over thousands of years. It takes time for our genes to evolve and yet each generation that improves themselves creates stronger genes for the next generation.
Why Are the Young Job Hopping?
It is a phenomena that the Millennial generation is changing jobs each three years. This is in contrast to two generations ago when people were farmers for life or at a single company for life. Why did people accept their situation in the past and are not accepting it now?
Has improved global communications and speed by which we can communicate put the metal to the pedal in all phases of our lives. We used to mail our communications. Now if people don’t respond to an email in an hour, someone is judging whether to do business with that person.
Now email is often too slow and people realize that texting is likely to be quicker in that everyone is addicted to carrying and checking cell phones. Did the cell phone become the instrument of our impatience? We send a communication now and we know that it arrives at the recipients device.
Our Environment is Pressuring Us to Accelerate
We see enticing advertisements and media on how successful people are acquiring material goods and our brain says we want that. Each day we are pummeled with glorious opportunities to travel and have experiences. We are sharing people having these experiences non-stop in social media. Hi, this is Robert sending pictures from Rome or while traveling down a river on a raft.
We can’t help but get pumped up from the opportunities that abound we can’t experience because we are working to make a living. We become impatient with waiting for slow progress while life is going on so fast around us. We feel the need to accomplish more in a day and more in a year.
Does the Lead Go to the Swift?
There is great competition between providers of goods and services to be the selected one. We can get most anything we need in a day. Why has the pace of delivery been accelerated? It feeds our desire to experience something new now. We have become the age of I want it now.
We expect perfection in everything. This is the age of guarantees and refunds. If it isn’t perfect or doesn’t meet our expectations, we want our money back. This places great stress on all providers from restaurants to luxury cars. Everything must be perfect and meet accelerating expectations to keep pace with those providers who can deliver beyond our expectations.
Evaluating Our Lives vs Time
How do we look at our lives in light of this fast paced experience of continuously having greater expectations? We become impatient with things that move too slow including our careers. Including other drivers or restaurant service or delivery. We have pumped up adrenal systems that are over revved and causing us stress.
Now we are caught in the throes of work life balance because the pace of everything demands we don’t rest. There is more to do. We have to get it done in ever shorter time spans to meet the pace of competition. Money also has a time value because it becomes worth less as time goes on. What costs a million today will cost two million soon.
What we don’t learn today will be passe in a year and we will be further behind until there will be no use for us. The necessary learning curve has gotten very fast. Start ups talk about the need to fail fast to learn quicker. Keeping up the pace of learning has put great pressure on everyone. Staying at a job where one has maximized their skills starts to create pressure to move where more can be learned. We have to move our way up the ladder.
Aaah for Some Free Time
We are on a treadmill that keeps accelerating. We find free time is at a premium. The great saying that the rich have money and the wealthy have time has some significance these days. The fact that some people will now accept less money to have more free time is a significant statement about the pace having reached its zenith. Did the caveman ever wish he had more free time?
The desire to be a vagabond or an entrepreneur has significance. Since everything can test who we are, why not take the short cut and become an independent who places themselves on the line everyday to feel the thrill of daily experiences. Instead of just trying for bigger paychecks, why not get to the essence and find out who we are instead, pass or fail.
Time has pressured us to find more meaning in life. We understand the grind and may rebel. We might prefer to search for why we are here and who we are. We look for passion instead of just paychecks. In fact, we have learned that unless we have passion, we might not be bringing enough to the table. Our most competitive tool may be “going all in”.
Now we evaluate the meaning of time and how to make each moment more precious. We seem to be beyond waiting things out and much more into making things happen. We feel the need to be more productive about everything. We want to be healthier, more skilled, more advanced, more independent, and more alive. We want experiences. Time has pressured us into feeling we are spending each moment more purposeful. Of course, time has not changed.
