Checking the Time
Why does convenience inhibit our patience?
How often do you check the time? It could be on your phone, your watch, your computer, or the clock hanging in a room where you live or work. I’ll start.
I check it in the morning when my alarm goes off, when I get out of the shower, when I’m eating breakfast, when I’m reading up on the news in the morning, and several times before I head out as I estimate when I’ll have to leave the house for work. I’ll check it when I get in the car, when I get to the destination, and multiple times in between unless I know I’m early. I also check my eta on my gps every few minutes during the drive. I’ll check it regularly before lunch or to see if I’ve worked long enough to justify a pause for a water break. I look at the time to see when lunch is over, or when I clock in or out.
I check it after work to see when to start making dinner or when to leave for another activity. I check it during the activity or dinner to make sure I start winding down at the right time (which I usually postpone anyway). I check it before prepping lunch for the next day, while brushing teeth, and after I start reading in bed. I check it at the end of the chapter to see if I have time for another.
These are only the examples during my day where I always check the time. There are countless times in-between where I glance at my watch to see how much time has slipped by. Additionally, I’m consistantly checking my calendar to check on dates in the future and remind myself of what I have going on or to plan additional events.
Each month, I pick something I’ve noticed to be the topic of a limerick. It helps me stay accountable for paying more attention to my surroundings and forces me to do more writing. This month, the thing I’ve noticed is how often I check the time. Here we go:
We used to have to pay with our dimes,
And wait in lines like strings from our chimes.
Now we pay with phones,
Get our stuff from drones,
Yet lose the patience of older times.
I was driving a trailer across town with my coworker Don (shoutout) and our conversation touched on this subject. He said, “Convenience inhibits our patience.” In the limerick, I tried to express this by comparing how efficient everyday tasks have become. Our technology has simplified and sped up so much of our life, we should have more time than ever. We can have people grocery shop for us. We can pay with the tap of a phone. We don’t have to talk to anyone to buy tickets for a flight or a concert. We can reschedule a meeting with a quick message and our maps reschedules our route when we hit traffic. We don’t have to find experts in-person because the things they’ve discovered are accessible online. You’d think this might make us more patient. So why is the opposite happening? Why is convenience inhibiting our patience?
I believe it’s simple. The faster and more efficient life becomes, the less tolerance we have for situations where we need exhibit patience. We used to be able to complain about long checkout lines at the grocery store, but now we have self-checkout. Well, not my neighborhood Aldi, but most others. And yet, if there’s even one person in the self-checkout line when I’m shopping elsewhere, I find myself impatiently scanning the ones in use to make sure I identify the one that will be ready next as soon as it becomes available. Which takes an average of what, 15 seconds? The everyday situations where we need to flex the patience muscle compared to the past are steadily decreasing. Put another way, how many seconds of aimless waiting, on average, does it take before you pull out your phone? That’s about the most concrete measurement of patience these days.
The one notable exception I’s highlight where something new has entered our daily lives that has tested our patience is resetting or authentifying usernames and passwords. It’s the exception that proves the rule. I think if you put it up to a vote on what to eliminate until the end of time, people would keep mosquitoes and exterminate dual-factor authentication. It’s a task that requires patience, and one where even the most well-tempered adult is at risk of becoming dangerously, unalterably incensed. I digress.
The problem is, when our patience with the smaller, less significant tasks of life shrinks, it affects the bigger things. If we’re less patient at the grocery store, with the idiot in the comments on social media, or with the person taking our order at the drive-through, do we really think we won’t be equally impatient with more significant tasks or interactions? Are we becoming less likely to attempt to learn a new skill? Less patient with our friends and family? Less likely to forgive or at least seek to understand others we disagree with? Less likely to be grateful for what we do have? Less likely to notice?
Time will continue to have control over my life whether I like it or not. Checking the time is not a bad thing, but noticing it has revealed how convenience is robbing me of patience. The more convenient I expect things to be, the more frustrated I get when they aren’t. I don’t want my threshold for patience to keep shrinking, but that’s the beauty of noticing. It’s often inconvenient in the short-term from an efficiency standpoint. Noticing takes time and often comes when it’s sought out, meaning you have to put aside something you could be working on accomplishing. It often also comes in the moments when we’re forced to wait. It’s precisely in the moments where we’re most vulnerable to impatience that we find the greatest opportunities to observe.
So next time choose the longer line. Order in the fast food restaurant instead of ordering ahead. Let your friend or coworker tell you that same story again. Put the audiobook at x1.0 speed. Avoid the highway even if you add 3 minutes to your drive. Not every time, and don’t be irresponsible or inconvenience others, but try to make life a little bit less efficient and convenient. You could well start to become a more patient person and you might be surprised what you notice.
A lot of reflective truth here. And love the photo of the Prague clock!