People often ask me why I plan everything so much in advance. For instance, I created an excel sheet for my GMAT preparation in December 2019 and I have been preparing for the test for approx. one month now although it will be in Mai (usually people practice for one or two months); the same goes for my job interviews. Among many other reasons for this compulsion to plan, I contemplated this weekend, “long term patience” contributes a lot to this habit.
Success is the sum of small efforts – repeated day in and day out
Through my past successes and failures, I learned that great things take a lot of time but not a massive one-off effort. Success is rather the result of many small efforts performed over a long period of time on a daily basis. Or as we use to say in Germany: “Rome was not built in a day”.
For instance, I have been working out for almost five years now. Doing this, I experienced that most people who are “long-run” impatient will eventually fail. They think they can gain muscles and lose fat very quickly, but it is a long-run game. Among the two most common reasons why most impatient people fail in “bodybuilding” are, first, that they over-strain themselves, become therefore injured, and are forced to stop working out consequently or, second, train very hard but irregularly, eat clean and healthy but binge drink at the weekend, and quit (too early) blaming their “bad genes” for their failure. Actually, you don’t have to work out six times a week, eat solely chicken, rice, and veggies for the rest of your life, and sacrifice every fun activity in order to get in shape. Eating healthy but delicious food and working out hard and regularly over the course of at least two years as well as not hurting yourself is almost everything it takes.
Another example is my YouTube channel and my blog which are very small right now and require me to spend a lot of time and energy to get it running. I would not say that these undertakings are great achievements (at least not yet IMO), but every YouTuber and blogger started to like me and most of them kept going, did something for their goals every day and were indeed long-term patient.
Macro patience and micro speed
Gary Vaynerchuk, a keynote speaker and author as well as a successful entrepreneur, constantly preaches his concept of “macro patience and micro speed”. I cannot agree more with him on this issue. Too many people want to obtain certain things very fast even though they still have a lot of time. Gary claims that you should work hard and a lot to achieve your goals (micro speed), but be very patient in the long run. According to Gary, you will eventually get to your objective as long as you adapt your plan adequately and work hard enough.
I am convinced that planning can greatly increase the chances of success. What is most important, though, and separates losers from winners is that winners never give up. Long run patience, consistency, as well as persistence are key.
