Urgent Patience
Winter Park, Colorado. Eight weeks out from race day.
“Everybody’s impatient at a macro, and just so patient at a micro, wasting your days worrying about years.”
-Gary Vaynerchuk in Tribe of Mentors
In 2014, Brooke and I were driving to attend our third wedding in three weeks. After I raced Ironman Texas in May, I flew to Mexico for a wedding the following weekend. A few days after returning, Brooke and I traveled to D.C. to attend another wedding encompassing several days. Then following that trip, we headed up to Winter Park, Colorado for the third of three weddings in as many weeks. The morning of the third wedding I had gone on a run in the hills above Boulder and had actually walked the last couple miles because I felt so worked. I was far from the competitive form of three weeks prior and was in no way feeling ready to take on anything in the future.
As we were driving up to Winter Park (about 2 hours from Boulder), we started talking about Ironman Boulder on the horizon, which was only eight weeks away. The conversation was essentially my concession that I probably wasn’t going to be in the shape I had hoped to be in. I was still planning to do what I could to get in shape, but the amount of time to prepare (based on where I was) just didn’t seem to be in my favor.
After some back and forth, Brooke said “then let’s go home tonight and get started tomorrow.” We had planned to stay that evening in Winter Park and drive back in the morning, ostensibly with training starting on Monday. However, we changed our plans and did drive back that night so I could start training one day early. In that moment, Brooke was able to see what I could not: every day matters.
I often think about this moment a lot because in the grand scheme of things, a day might not seem like anything, but it’s actually everything. The reason it is everything is because it is the collective string of these days that compounds towards the long term goals. It is easy to think that there is a lot of time to get something done, and in many ways there is. But only when we treat each day like it matters.
The perennial challenge is that we can easily cultivate a sense of complacency by wrongly confusing it with patience.
If you want to read the full quote from Gary Varnerchuk I included at the beginning of this article, you can find it on page 216 of Tribe of Mentors by Ferriss. His statement was in response to what advice he would give to younger people just starting out. Without restating his exact words, the basic idea is that many people have visions of being somewhere, or doing something, in the years down the road, but their actions in the moment, or on that day, aren’t reflective of achieving that goal. What really resonated with me is that he exhibits a lot of patience in achieving long term goals because he is so focused and driven on a daily basis. By treating each day with value, they dovetail into the long term vision/goal over time.
As a caveat, I could see this discussion leading into an over-correcting attitude where too much is sought after on a day-to-day basis. This is where I try to amalgamate the two extremes into the idea of “urgent patience.” It’s sort of a laid back carpe diem, whereby each day is seen as a chance to make progress, but progress takes many days.
It also coincides with “Just Start Now.” When I was younger and was just starting to understand the idea of a New Years Resolution, I didn’t understand the logic behind it. If the resolution was somehow linked to self improvement or success, why wait until January 1st?
Just Start Now.
-justin
Eight weeks after the wedding:
