<story><title>Impatience: The Pitfall of Every Ambitious Person</title><url>http://dariusforoux.com/impatience/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>keiferski</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a big fan of both Robert Greene&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;Mastery&lt;/i&gt; and Leonardo da Vinci, but I think using da Vinci as an example of patience is fairly misleading. After having read numerous biographies on the man, my conclusion is that it&amp;#x27;s remarkable that he managed to get as much done as he did. He was the ultimate dabbler, interested in and curious about virtually everything. His works took a long time to complete because he generally was distracted by some minor detail for years on end. If the ideal is productivity, then surely Michelangelo is a far better role model.&lt;p&gt;Of course, the &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; question here is whether productivity is what one should be ultimately aiming at. Doing &lt;i&gt;very few things very well&lt;/i&gt; (alternatively, &lt;i&gt;creating a small number of high-quality things&lt;/i&gt;) is a better ideal, to my mind.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;#x27;It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.&amp;#x27;&lt;/i&gt; - Friedrich Nietzsche</text></comment>
<story><title>Impatience: The Pitfall of Every Ambitious Person</title><url>http://dariusforoux.com/impatience/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lettergram</author><text>On the one hand - I agree you have to be patient in order to execute at the right times. On the other hand, that&amp;#x27;s only in terms of timing...&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t be patient and wait for opportunities. You have to be consistently searching for them, and execute as you find them - staying as nimble as possible.&lt;p&gt;For instance, I am always 100% invested, but always in various types of assets. Some investments I can get my money out in 24 hours, others take weeks or months to divest. That enables me to execute quickly when I see opportunity, but only in a limited fashion.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t believe it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;impatience&amp;quot; that keeps me invested at that level. It&amp;#x27;s the fact that, being idol does nothing.&lt;p&gt;Hell, I&amp;#x27;m even platform around identifying new opportunities. I didn&amp;#x27;t &amp;#x2F; don&amp;#x27;t want to be patient, so now I&amp;#x27;m building something to enable faster decisions:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;projectpiglet.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;projectpiglet.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kind of reminds me of a similar parable from the story Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein, in it there was a man &amp;quot;too lazy to fail&amp;quot;[1]. The idea is summed up by a quote:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Progress isn&amp;#x27;t made by early risers. It&amp;#x27;s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.&lt;p&gt;Ambition is just trying to accomplish things. In my opinion, it&amp;#x27;s impatience that pushes us to solve problems, else we&amp;#x27;d all settle for the way things are. The trick, is learning to solve them in a way that mitigates risk. Which is really what the author is trying to get at. Arrogance (or over confidence) might be a better description of the pitfall, than impatience.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Time_Enough_for_Love#&amp;quot;The_Tale_of_the_Man_Who_Was_Too_Lazy_to_Fail&amp;quot;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Time_Enough_for_Love#&amp;quot;The_Tale...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>