I was going through the airport security checkpoint this morning and the man in front of me (I’ll call him “Dude”) looked really impatient.
The guy in front of him (I’ll call him “Guy”) wasn’t even moving that slowly. He was doing the typical things — taking off his shoes, putting his luggage on the conveyor, etc. — at a normal pace.
Dude was rolling his eyes, trying to move in front of Guy, and just being kind of pissy.
We walked through the metal detector and gathered our belongings. Dude was rushing and walked off while I grabbed my stuff.
When I looked up, I saw that Dude left his suitcase on the conveyor. I called to him and he had to walk back to grab his bag.
His impatience made him forget something really important and necessary.
(I thought about the fact that he might be late for his flight, but I found out he was on my flight, which wasn’t taking off for a while.)
This can happen to anyone. We’re all busy and have places to go, and we want to get there as fast as possible.
I admit I’ve been impatient when it comes to the startups I’ve been working on.
In the startup world, you’re supposed to “move fast and break things.”
You’re supposed to “fail fast”, “hire fast and fire fast”, talk fast, run fast, blah blah blah.
And I get impatient when progress isn’t made each and every day.
Maybe I need to better understand that things take time to develop.
For my first startup, I was impatient when things weren’t progressing. It failed for a number of reasons, but I think one of them was due to my impatience of things not moving fast enough. And I left some relationships behind.
I think moving fast is very important. In an ideal world, you’ll make quick decisions, build quickly, iterate, learn faster, and move forward.
But sometimes you need to understand that things take time, and some of the best products and companies take years and years to find success.
If you move too fast, you might leave things behind.
Have you ever left something behind because you were too impatient? Talk to me in the comments!
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This post was originally published on mikewchan.com.
