Impatient
Feeling impatient means wanting something to happen sooner than it is: the line to move, the reply to come, the progress to show. It's a small kind of anger aimed at time itself. In one set of studies, people waiting on big news reported less worry when they spent more of the wait absorbed in something, so the wait itself is the part you can change.1
- On the wheel: Angry, then frustrated, then impatient
- Nearby: Annoyed, blocked, frustrated
- Often shows up as: Refreshing, pacing, finishing other people's sentences
- Often points to: Something you want, and a clock you can't speed up
The fortieth refresh
You check the tracking page again. In the checkout line you count the items in the cart ahead of you. Someone tells a slow story and you nod faster, as if that would help.
Impatience lives in the gap between when you want something and when it arrives, and the more it matters, the wider that gap feels.
"I sent the offer on the apartment at 9 a.m. By noon I'd checked my email maybe forty times and snapped at my partner for asking if I'd heard anything."
The marshmallow test, rerun
The famous version: preschoolers who held out for a second marshmallow grew up to do better in life, which gets told as proof that patience is a trait you either have or don't.
Tyler Watts, Greg Duncan and Haonan Quan repeated the test in 2018 with a larger group, focusing on children whose mothers hadn't finished college.2 Waiting longer at age 4 did predict somewhat better school results at 15, though the link was half the size of the original reports, and it shrank by two thirds once family background, early ability and home life were counted.2 Links with behavior at 15 were much smaller and rarely significant.2
Much of what looked like a fixed trait was explained by the children's circumstances.2
One impatient afternoon says nothing about your character.
Waiting on the bar exam
Kyla Rankin and colleagues in Kate Sweeny's lab followed law graduates waiting on bar exam results and doctoral students on the academic job market.1 The ones who spent more of the wait absorbed in an activity, the state called flow, reported less worry and fewer negative feelings.1 In a lab version, a game that adjusted to each player's skill eased bad feelings during a wait for a rating, though it didn't lower worry.1
The catch was that people often couldn't name which activities would absorb them.1 Work that out before the wait starts.
Impatient, frustrated or anxious?
Impatient is "it will happen, I just want it now". Frustrated is "something's blocking it and pushing isn't working". Anxious, closer to apprehensive, is "I'm not sure it'll turn out well".
The third one often hides inside the first. Refreshing the inbox forty times is rarely about the clock.
Making the wait shorter, or better
- Find the end date. "The bank closes the loan on Thursday." A wait with a date is easier than a wait into fog.
- Ask whether it can go faster. If one call or email would speed it up, make it. If not, the job has changed from pushing to waiting.
- Choose an absorbing task in advance. Hard enough to hold your attention: a puzzle, a run on a route you're learning, a recipe you've never cooked. That's the flow finding.1
- Schedule the checking. The inbox at 12 and at 4, and not in between.
- Warn the people around you. Finished sentences and loud sighs land on someone. "Sorry, I'm impatient today" keeps it from turning into a fight.
What are you waiting for, and what would waiting well look like? Write the date it should end and one thing you'll do with the time until then.
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask about feeling impatient
Why am I so impatient all of a sudden?
A sudden change often points to load: more stress, less sleep, or one big wait that makes every small one feel worse. If it comes with a low mood or a short fuse for everything, the irritable page covers the body checks.
Is impatience an ADHD thing?
It can be part of it. The National Institute of Mental Health lists interrupting and trouble waiting one's turn among the signs of impulsivity in ADHD.3 Impatience on its own isn't enough to say. If it has been there since childhood and shows up at work, at school and at home, a doctor can assess it.
Are some people just more patient?
Partly, maybe, though the marshmallow rerun suggests circumstances explain more than the old story claimed.2
Related
- Frustrated: when something is blocking you.
- Annoyed: when small things keep bothering you.
- Apprehensive: when the wait is about a result.