Every time you can’t wait, a billionaire gets richer. You make a Thursday 9pm impulse buy. Why not, it’s basically the weekend. It’s been a tough week. You deserve it. Five minutes pass and you’ve refreshed the tracker twice. It tells you it’s arriving in two days. You could put the phone down and get on with your evening. Instead, it slips out. ‘Two days..? For f***s sake.’ You catch yourself and wonder, what you have become. Welcome to what I call the Death of Patience i.e. the point in your life where you realise you need everything now, from deliveries to results. Not in two days. In an hour, max. You might think you’re just an impatient person. Or spoilt. Or one of those people who just can’t sit still. This is all false. What has in fact happened is your brain has been conditioned. And thank god for that, because conditioning can be reversed. The bizarre brain science of why 2 days feels like forever Let’s start with the science because none of this is about your character. Any brain will do this when you feed it speed all day. Your brain’s reward system has been working overtime. It runs on dopamine and the neuroscientist Kent Berridge says it’s about wanting the thing more than it is about enjoying the thing. All waiting is the gap between desire and getting. And in today’s world, this gap has shrunk to near non-existence. The psychiatrist Anna Lembke wrote Dopamine Nation and she says pleasure and pain work like a seesaw. When you get something you enjoy, like a mini Mars from a Celebrations tin, the seesaw tips towards pleasure. Then your brain pushes it back down the other side to level things out. It’s the push the other way that is the craving for another hit, when you say ‘oh, I want a second mini Mars — right now’. If you ignore the immediate craving, the seesaw will settle by itself. In Lembke’s words, ‘if I wait long enough, that feeling passes.’ But if you satisfy a desire the moment one arises, the seesaw never gets the chance to balance itself out. Lembke says that over time, it stays tipped towards the pain side. So you feel more irritable and anxious and you need more Celebrations just to feel normal. This is what never waiting does to us. It leaves us with a shorter fuse. Why most of us lose our patience in 25 seconds Think about how many gaps between wanting and getting you unconsciously minimise in a standard day. Stopping the microwave with three seconds to go. Jabbing ‘close doors’ in the lift. Switching queues. Skipping the intro. Paying extra for next-day delivery. Buying the plant already in flower. I’ve done, and still do, many of these things. In a survey of 2,000 British people, a red traffic light started to agitate after just 25 seconds. There’s a concept in behavioural economics called hyperbolic discounting, where you choose the smaller reward now over a bigger win later. It’s fine to sometimes do this. But what we don’t talk about enough is a world where every reward is now. After a million moments where our modern world has made it easier than ever to close the gap between desire and obtaining, something in your reward system gives. Your tolerance for any wait starts to collapse, because your brain was never built to have every want and whim met immediately, often with with zero effort. Don’t worry, your brain is fine. It has simply adapted to a world where there’s no waiting anymore. The forgotten joy of waiting a week for your holiday snaps Everyone’s capacity to wait is dissolving. But those of us who remember when all good things took time often feel the loss more acutely. And there’s a reason for this. I’m old enough to remember taking a film of holiday snaps to Boots and having to wait a week to pick them up. You had no idea what any of them looked like until you opened the envelope, usually on the pavement because you couldn’t wait another second, and at least 1 in 10 had your Dad’s thumb covering part of the lens. But it didn’t matter. Because opening that envelope was one of the best parts of the holiday. Waiting was built into normal life and the rewards were all the better for it. By the time you’re a fully fledged adult, you’ve had decades of this need-for-speed conditioning: * ‘Don’t miss out’ (translation: don’t take the time to decide) * ’Don’t cook tonight’ (translation: don’t spend an hour on a nourishing meal) * ‘Don’t put your plans on hold’ (translation: don’t wait until you can afford it) * ‘Don’t go anywhere’ (translation: don’t wait for the next one, it’s already starting) You’ve been living at the modern world’s breakneck speed for so long that it’s become the default. And you’re not even aware it’s happening. Until one day you wake up and suddenly realise, you’ve completely run out of patience. 4 sneaky ways modern life made waiting feel unbearable Several shifts in modern life have come together to make waiting for anything feel unbearable. Shortcuts everywhere. Everything now has a faster or easier version. My Gmail keeps trying to get AI to ‘correct’ my emails. Supermarkets sell pre-chopped onions. When there’s always a quicker option available, the slower one starts to feel like it’s broken. Even when it’s better. Results on demand. We expect to see results instantly. We work out twice then give up because the bingo wings are still there. I once tweeted about how cool I thought it was that I could have a fresh sourdough loaf within 48 hours of deciding to make it, and someone replied: ‘I could never wait that long for bread.’ I remember wondering if they were being serious or not. Two days was apparently too long for something slow-fermented, handmade and more delicious and nutritious because of it. Reward on tap. Likes, notifications, episode drops, express parcels on your doorstep. These arrive all day every day. So the slow rewards (fermenting bread, knitting a jumper, growing a fruit tree, reading the entire book) struggle to compete. Not exactly a fair fight. No more seasons. Who are these people buying strawberries in December? Asparagus is now available all year. We used to wait months for the first of anything in season and it tasted better for the wait. Now nothing feels like a treat because nothing ever runs out. Imagine knowing we would all live forever. Life would be dull as f**k. Why wanting to wait makes you seem strange (and who profits from this) The thing that makes clawing your patience back uncomfortable is that other people will find it weird. When you choose the slow, more effortful way, you’re stepping out of a system that profits from none of us waiting. And instead of asking why that system needs us all in such a hurry, it’s easier for people to instead question you. So you can be accused of: * ‘Living in the past’ * ‘Having too much time on your hands’ * ‘Having the wrong priorities’ If someone trains 18 months to run a marathon, they’re seen as dedicated. But spend a week waiting for a jar of pickles to perfectly sour, and you’re seen as a bit odd. People still ask me, ‘What’s the point in learning how to make sourdough that takes two days, when you can just buy sourdough?’ and ‘What’s the point in growing a tomato plant for six months, when you can just buy the tomatoes?’ These questions come straight out of the system, because why do anything for yourself when you can just pay to skip that part? It’s not your job to fix the discomfort of others. It simply illustrates how well the system works. Waiting has been made to feel so unbearable that most of us will happily pay to never have to do it again. And this is by design. The 4 fears that keep you paying for the quick fix But there is a complication. Which is that waiting feels risky. You’ve been sold the instant version of everything for much of your life. Same-day. Express. Ready in minutes. It creates a positive feedback loop. You want something, you get it immediately, you bask in the dopamine hit, and next time you want it even sooner. It’s a powerful loop and you’re about to break the f****r. So, you might be afraid that: * You’ll fall behind (everyone else seems to be getting there faster) * You’ll miss out (thanks, ads) * You’ll waste time (as if waiting is the same as wasting) * People will think you’re weird (this is fine, see above) These fears are understandable. But they’re also simply a result of conditioning. Most of the outcomes you are wary of won’t happen. They are stories designed to keep you fearful and therefore, spending your money (on the quick fix). Guinness was right: 4 rewards of learning to wait again Let’s get clear about what you actually gain when you learn to wait again. You’re gaining anticipation. A reminder that dopamine is about the wanting. When I ferment a bunch of carrots, I get excited knowing that in seven days, that jar will be outrageously delicious. Not in three days, not in five days. Seven days. The waiting is part of the thrill. You’re gaining quality. A stew after four hours blipping on the hob. A table made of solid wood that took years to grow and weeks to craft. Strawberries tasting like summer in July instead of flavoured water and disappointment in December. Guinness created an ad campaign back in 1999 built around the phrase ‘good things come to those who wait’. It’s been lauded as one of the greatest of all time for a reason. You’re gaining a return. As Warren Buffett said, ‘Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.’ It’s why I’m planting fruit trees on our land in Portugal that won’t feed us for years. Investments, skills, soil, friendships. If you give them long enough, they pay back a lot more than you put in. You’re gaining control back. As Lembke says, when you wait out a craving and it passes, the seesaw settles and so do you. You strengthen
