“We’re impatient with what takes time… and patient with what shouldn’t.”
Hey Rollers,
A few months back I heard Seth Godin describe something that made its way into my highlights archive. He called it the “circle of now”.
A toddler, he says, has a circle of now that lasts about seven seconds. If they don’t get what they want in that window, everything falls apart.
But someone at the peak of their maturity might have a circle of now that stretches out over a decade. They’re able to go through years of effort, discomfort, and delayed gratification because they can see far enough ahead for it to make sense.
What got me thinking here isn’t just the contrast between seven seconds and ten years, but how much of our behaviour seems to sit somewhere in between, often in ways that don’t quite match what we say we want.
At first glance it seems the lesson here is about patience. That if we could just extend our timelines, be a little more disciplined, hold on a little longer, things would work out the way we intend. There’s truth in that, but the more I’ve sat with it, the more it feels incomplete.
Because we don’t just get this wrong in one direction.
We’re impatient with what takes time, and patient with what shouldn’t.
We expect meaningful progress in our work to show up quickly, even when we know, intellectually at least, that most things worth building don’t reveal themselves that way. We give something a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, and when it doesn’t quite materialise, we begin to question whether it’s working at all. The timeline becomes the verdict.
At the same time, there are other areas of our lives where we do the opposite. Conversations we know we need to have somehow find their way into next week, and then the week after that. Decisions that would create movement get delayed, or avoided altogether. Situations that no longer quite fit are given more time, often under the banner of patience, when in reality they might just need a shift.
I’ve caught myself in both.
Wanting something to happen faster than it realistically could, while giving far more time than necessary to things that weren’t really going anywhere. It doesn’t always feel like a contradiction when you’re in it, but looking back, it’s hard not to see the pattern.
What this idea has helped me realise is that the question isn’t simply whether your circle of now is big or small. It’s whether it’s the right size for what you’re asking of it.
Because our behaviour tends to follow the timeline we give things. If that timeline is too short, we pull out before anything meaningful has had a chance to take shape. If it’s too long, we can end up staying in situations that would benefit from a bit more urgency.
Through a Smart Toughness lens, that feels important. You’ve heard me say that doing hard things isn’t just about holding on or pushing through. It’s about knowing where something needs time to compound, and where it needs decisive action to create change.
The work is knowing which is which.
Until next week – avoid the resets.
Keep rolling.
Justin 👊
Take Action in 3 Minutes:
Think about one area of your life where you feel like things aren’t moving as quickly as you’d like.
And then think about one area where, if you’re honest, you’ve been sitting on something for a while.
Sometimes the shift isn’t in doing more, or doing less. It’s simply in recognising whether something needs more time… or less of it.
