My trusty blender died a couple of weeks ago, or rather I killed the thing with overwork and by overloading. The new blender had a lot to live up to. On the advice of the sales assistant I bought the most powerful one on the market, but was still frustrated by its performance. Why wouldn’t this thing respond the way I wanted it to when I filled it to the brim? It’s taken some trial and error to work out that if I want to optimise the blender’s performance then patience is all that’s required.
I have two choices. I can take the shortcut, overfill the bowl and become frustrated when the motor can’t process the load, or I can gradually feed vegetables into it and watch as they are pulped in seconds.

In business as in life, we seek out what we think is the quickest route to the outcome we want, then we get frustrated when things don’t work out as we hoped they would. When our expectations don’t match our capabilities, or the customer’s worldview, or the marketplace’s readiness, we push harder—trying to hurry things along before it’s time.

Sometimes what we need is more patience and more time to work out how to turn aspirations into outcomes. Slow and steady is often the quickest way to get to where we want to go.

Image by Steven Depolo.