Patience in Professional Success

An email from Coach Sommer I revisit often: Hi Tim, Patience. Far too soon to expect strength improvements. Strength improvements [for a movement like this] take a minimum of 6 weeks. Any perceived improvements prior to that are simply the result of improved synaptic facilitation. In plain English, the central nervous system simply became more efficient at that particular movement with practice. This is, however, not to be confused with actual strength gains. Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. And accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. No beating yourself up over small bumps in the road. Learn to enjoy and appreciate the process. This is especially important because you are going to spend far more time on the actual journey than with those all too brief moments of triumph at the end. Certainly celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. In fact, if you are not encountering defeat on a fairly regular basis, you are not trying hard enough. And absolutely refuse to accept less than your best. Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not to a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. Much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. This provides far too many opportunities to inadvertently drift from your chosen goal. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in over two decades of #leading cross-functional teams, it’s this — #Patience is powerful ! When you’re responsible for driving results, it’s tempting to push for quick decisions and immediate outcomes. But time and again, I’ve seen that the most meaningful growth and the best solutions come when you give people the space to think, learn, and figure things out. As a leader, practicing patience has meant- ✅Listening fully, without rushing to provide answers. ✅Trusting my team to take ownership, even when it takes longer. ✅Holding back feedback until the timing is right — when it can truly be heard and acted on. Patience isn’t about inaction — it’s about being intentional. It builds trust, nurtures growth, and often leads to far better results than impatience ever could. And honestly? It’s not always easy. But it’s always worth it . Try it ! LinkedIn LinkedIn News India LinkedIn Guide to Creating

In tech, leadership, or life — nothing great works on the first attempt. Or the second. Would you agree? But persistence + discipline + repetition... That’s the real cheat code. And funnily enough, the best reminder didn’t come from Silicon Valley or some innovation summit… It came from a teenager in Wuhan mastering a centuries-old performance art. He’s performing dingwan, a traditional bowl-balancing act that feels like a real-life physics engine stress test — stacked ceramic bowls, flipped mid-air, all while standing on a moving beam. On the first attempt? He fails. The crowd holds its breath. On the second? Perfect execution. Bowls stacked. Balance flawless. Crowd cheering like he just pushed a production fix that saved the entire company. And that’s the lesson we constantly forget in tech: ➡️ Your first prototype will fail. ➡️ Your first pitch won’t land. ➡️ Your first leadership attempt might wobble. But the second, third, and tenth.. That’s where mastery is built. That’s where resilience forms. That’s where leaders are forged. If a teenager can keep a calm mind while balancing ceramic bowls on a moving beam… we can certainly stay steady through market turbulence, or a tough sprint review. Old skills. New generation. Old wisdom. New industries. Persistence wins — in performance, in leadership, and in technology. Keep going. Winners aren’t the ones who get it right first. They’re the ones who don’t stop until they do. #Leadership via @chinainside #TechLeadership #Innovation #Persistence #Discipline #NextGenTalent #GrowthMindset #Resilience #EngineeringCulture #MindsetMatters #FutureOfWork #Inspiration #HighPerformance

The Best Job You Didn't Get (And Why Patience Is A Superpower) When I was 28, I was obsessed with making six figures and having my own office by 30. Not hitting that goal ended up being one of the best things to ever happen to me. When I was 42, I chased a much better goal: my former boss’s job—one of only 50 SVP roles in a company of 100,000. I went after it hard. I didn’t get it. And that, too, was one of the best things to ever happen to me. Early in your career, it’s easy to get caught up in promotions, titles, and the next step. I get it. But after leading a 240-person team and living through my own career highs and heartbreaks, I’ve learned this: Patience isn’t just a virtue—it’s a legit competitive advantage. The most meaningful careers are built through consistency and generosity—giving so much that you leave things better than you found them. Patience lets you do that by teaching you to: Play for Trajectory, Not Quick Wins: Long games create legacies. Short games create checkmarks. Find Happiness in the Work Itself: When your pride comes from contribution, milestones become byproducts, not drivers. Make Space for Big Ideas: Without pressure to rush, you get room to create—and one right idea can change everything. Most importantly, patience makes you sturdy. Careers are full of disappointment, but setbacks aren’t just obstacles—they’re training. If you can rebound from heartbreaks in your 20s, you’ll be ready for the bigger ones later: the C-level job that didn’t happen, the dream project that never launched. I’ve been through those. And what I learned is that the job you don’t get shapes you just as much as the one you do. Patience and persistence aren’t just survival tactics—they’re your superpowers. So if you’re early in your career and frustrated: Stay patient. Play the long game. Your best work—and your biggest wins—will come from being the most chill, patient, and strategic version of yourself over the course. And if you’re later in your career and disappointed: Stay patient. You’re only in this position because of what you’ve already built. Impact outlasts titles. And I promise—the people you’ve lifted along the way are a legacy no job title could ever capture because you probably taught them patience and persistence too.

In a world of quarterly targets and instant gratification, long-term thinking is becoming a rare—and powerful—superpower. The leaders I admire most are the ones who resist the pressure to react and instead choose to respond. Managers who invest in people and ideas that won’t necessarily pay off tomorrow, but will shape what’s possible years from now. Long-term thinking shows up in all kinds of ways: ✔️ Building a resilient company culture. The strength of a resilient company culture should not be underestimated. It is one that you can lean on during good and bad times. It can serve as your compass and be with you through a company’s evolution. A resilient company allows you to innovate and keeps your mission and purpose aligned. There are no short cuts to building resilience. Meaning that the most resilient cultures are those built over time and through long-term strategic thinking and commitment. ✔️ Choosing sustainable growth over unsustainable speed. Quick growth is fine—great, even—but not if it causes you to make careless mistakes that will be difficult to recover from. If you're growing so fast that you are neglecting quality, or worse, safety, then it's time to recalibrate. Long-term success means prioritizing the well-being of your customers and your team. ✔️ Focusing on relationships with your customer, not just transactions. This includes knowing your stakeholders. If revenue dips, it might be tempting to raise prices to patch the shortfall. However, ask yourself: is  price the problem, or is there something deeper missing in the product or service? Short-term fixes can backfire if they erode trust. Long-term thinking requires you to deeply understand the needs of the people you serve—and to keep earning their loyalty over time. Personally, I’ve found that long-term thinking brings clarity. It helps me filter out the noise and focus on what really matters—not just in business, but in life. If you want to lead with vision, ask yourself: What will matter most in five years? And what am I doing today to build toward that? When you can zoom out, you often see the path forward more clearly. And that’s how leaders—and legacies—are built.

The advice to "be patient" with your career is incomplete. Here's what's missing: Most people think patience means waiting passively for things to improve. But that's not patience, that's hope. Jeff Bezos's friend wanted to learn handstands. He hired a coach who told him something that changed everything: "Most people think this takes 2 weeks. It actually takes 6 months." A 12x difference between perception and reality. When you don't know what realistic timelines look like, you quit viable paths too early. You think something's broken when it's actually just getting started. Here's how strategic patience actually works: 1️⃣ Research the terrain before you start Ask people who've achieved what you want specific questions about their journey. How many networking meetings did it take before they saw results? What were the early signs of progress? How long before the big breakthrough happened? This creates realistic checkpoints instead of fantasy timelines. 2️⃣ Track the raindrops of progress Small indicators seem meaningless individually but signal real momentum when you add them up: Your boss mentions your work in a team meeting Strangers in your field send LinkedIn connection requests Someone asks you to lead a project outside your usual scope People start coming to you for advice on topics you care about These keep you moving forward when the major milestones are still months away. 3️⃣ Stay directionally correct, not dogmatically focused I know someone who dreamed of becoming a film actress after college. But life happened, and she ended up raising her son near the North Dakota-Minnesota border instead of moving to Hollywood. She didn't abandon her goal though. She took regional acting gigs and eventually became the face of North Dakota's tourism campaign. That visibility led to leading an arts nonprofit, where she's now been CEO for a decade and quadrupled its budget. She didn't become the next Meryl Streep, but she built a bigger career than many of her friends who moved to LA and spent years getting rejected at casting calls. The path rarely looks exactly like you planned. But if you're moving toward your broader goals, you're making progress that matters. Strategic patience isn't about waiting for things to happen to you. It's about understanding realistic timelines, recognizing progress when it's small, and staying flexible about the exact route while you build something meaningful. 💾 Save this if you're building something that takes time. ➡️ Send this to someone who needs permission to keep going. ➕ Follow Dorie Clark for more on building a career with intention.

One of the most important skill I see diminishing in people these days is... Patience! A lot of us never had to develop this skill. Being born in a lower middle class family, I had to naturally wait for occasions like Marriage/ Diwali/ Summer Vacations for buying new clothes. I still remember my dad promising to purchase me a wrist watch if I got 80+ marks in Maths exam. I am sure a lot of us would relate to these experiences growing up. What these did to us was naturally made us learn the art of patience. The world today is being built increasingly for instant gratification. Food, Grocery, Clothes, Everything today is available not just on our fingertips but within 30min or a day. While it's great for convenience, it has started building a generation that increasingly lacks patience and has very low tolerance levels. Most hard things are built on fundamentals of patience & persistence - whether it's a successful startup, a beautiful relationship or an amazing parenthood. When we lack patience and tolerance we tend to move quicker than what it takes to build these long term things. If there is one life skill you need to focus on, learn the art of patience. Just start small - 💡 DELAY: Have an urge to order something? Just delay by an hour (distract yourself or put a password that's difficult to remember) - see if you still want that? 💡 TOLERATE: Facing discomfort travelling to work or waking up early? Tolerate a little more than giving up - see if it helps. 💡 PRACTICE: Take a hobby that slows you down (as simple as writing, painting is enough). #EmotionalWellness #MentalHealth #WorkplaceWellness #StudentsWellness #YourDOST PS. That's the photo from early days of YourDOST - no funding, no team. We used to stand outside the PG and distribute pamplets. Used to post on FB groups and then come back and also take sessions ourselves (mentor model). The post-its you see are daily dashboard with each post-it containing the number of sessions and visitors we were getting each day. 😀

“If I move too slowly, I could loose momentum. If I move too quickly, I could make mistakes.” This is a sentiment I’ve heard from more than one CEO in coaching sessions. And it captures one of the hardest disciplines in leadership: strategic patience. We live in a world that prizes speed—quarterly results, instant feedback, immediate impact. The pressure to act quickly, to “do something,” can feel overwhelming. Yet, the most effective leaders often know that the real power lies not in speed, but in timing. Strategic patience is not inaction. It is the discipline of holding steady, resisting the temptation for premature moves, and waiting for the moment when action will have its greatest effect. It is the art of slowing down in order to go faster and have more impact later. Through my work with CEOs, here are some lessons I’ve observed: 1. Timing is strategy. A brilliant idea launched too early can fail just as easily as a weak idea. Strategic patience is about sensing when the market, the culture, or the organization is ready. 2. The long game matters more than quick wins. Leaders face enormous pressure for immediate results, but sustainable value comes from playing the long game. Patience allows a leader to invest in compounding growth rather than chasing applause. 3. Slowing down creates speed later. Taking time to align teams, clarify purpose, and build trust may feel slow at first—but it leads to faster execution and fewer setbacks in the long run. 4. Emotional steadiness is a strategy. Strategic patience requires leaders to manage their own anxiety, investor demands, and team restlessness. Calm leadership creates confidence, especially in uncertain times. 5. Some things can’t be rushed. Culture change, leadership transitions, and trust-building don’t happen overnight. The leader’s role is to create the right conditions and then let things unfold. 6. Patience is not procrastination. There’s a fine line between waiting wisely and avoiding tough calls. The most self-aware CEOs learn to distinguish between the two. 7. Patience builds resilience. The more a leader practices holding steady through uncertainty, the more confidence they build in themselves—and in their teams. At its heart, strategic patience is about trust & wisdom. It’s easy to mistake patience for passivity. But in truth, it is an active form of leadership. It demands courage—the courage to hold the line when others push for haste, the courage to let go of control, and the courage to believe in the long-term vision even when the short-term is noisy. In CEO coaching, I often see leaders discover that their biggest breakthroughs come not from doing more, but from learning when not to act. Strategic patience, practiced well, becomes a quiet but powerful advantage. Where in your leadership are you being invited to practice patience—not as a delay, but as a strategy? Because sometimes, the boldest move a leader can make is to wait.

I believed success would come quickly if I worked hard & made smart decisions. But here’s the truth no one talks about: In the first year of Finvision, I cycled 25 km to meet clients. I had no big office, no flashy branding, and certainly no shortcuts. Some meetings went well; others ended with polite rejections. There were moments I questioned myself:  – “Why is this taking so long?”  – “Am I doing something wrong?” But then I remembered the value of waiting. Think of a Bamboo plant. For the first few years, it hardly grows above ground. All its energy goes into building a strong root system. But once the roots are established, the bamboo shoots up rapidly. Entrepreneurship is much the same. The slow, unseen effort is what builds the foundation for exponential growth. Today, Finvision Financial Services manages assets worth multi hundred crores. But this didn’t happen overnight. It took years of consistent effort, countless conversations, and the discipline to stay focused even when results were slow to show. Patience allowed me to: – Build trust with clients, one relationship at a time. – Learn from failures without rushing to quick fixes. – Create a strong foundation that could sustain long-term growth. In today’s world, we’re told to “hustle harder,” “move fast,” and “scale quickly.” But, rushing can lead to poor decisions and burnout. If you’re feeling impatient about your progress, remember this: the best things in life—and business—take time. Patience isn’t about sitting idle; it’s about working consistently and trusting the process. So, slow down.  Focus on what truly matters.  Let your efforts compound over time. Have you faced moments where patience helped you succeed? #business #success #growth #patience

Here's what successful early-stage founders aren't telling you (coming from someone who hit $100M+ in revenue). WHY building a successful business takes time. People keep preaching about putting in the hours, but they don't tell you why. So I'm going to. Because you need time to make mistakes AND learn from them. On my 10-year journey building StackCommerce to $100M+, I made thousands of mistakes. Those mistakes shaped my success. Adapting and overcoming them is why I get to tell this story. The biggest mistake I made early on was not investing in hires at the experience-level I needed and then expecting those people to perform at a level higher than they were capable of. It resulted in my being hyper-active in the business and the team feeling micro-managed. The Glassdoor reviews were not pretty for the first 5 years. I probably hired and lost a half dozen engineering leads in the first 5-6 years of the business alone. One challenge was we didn't have the budget to hire the best - so often times we would focus on hiring more people rather than the best people. Over the years - we learned from our mistakes here - but really I wasn't able to take that into account until I started my next company Onward. Now we have a powerhouse team of just 10 people and the majority of them are senior-level folks who know their craft inside and out. It allows the team to have more ownership. This allows me to run the company more hands-off. I wouldn’t have picked this—or many of the other lessons I learned along the way—had I tried to sprint to an exit in 3 years. Too many early-stage founders are trying to build the next $100M startup in 6/12/18 months. But that isn't enough time to make the mistakes you need to learn how to build a successful business. My advice: focus on one thing for 6, 7, 8 years—or even 10. Patience will help you win in the long run. Create a vision for the decade, not the year, and you'll be surprised what you can accomplish.