Patience isn’t always a virtue. Sometimes there's no good reason to wait.

Too many people wait too long for days that will never come. They allow someday, slowly but surely, to slip away. At its worst, patience leads to complacency, missed chances, moves not made.

That’s why Peter Thiel’s famous question resonates with people: “How can you achieve your ten year plan in the next six months?”

It's a question worth asking because it's possible you're deceiving yourself, mistaking molehills for unmovable mountains, making excuses when you should be making moves.

Of course, Bill Gates has an equally famous quote stating just the opposite: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten.” In other words, be patient—good things take longer than you think.

The reason we get conflicting answers about patience is that we ask the wrong question.

The question isn’t whether patience is good or bad. It’s: when does it pay to be patient?

On one hand, a lot of unnecessary huffing and puffing comes from people being impatient in situations where there’s nothing they can do to speed things along, where waiting is the only option and patience is required.

On the other hand, a lot of complacency stems from people being patient in situations where there are things they could be doing to accelerate the process but aren't, where there’s a window of opportunity that won't be open forever, where assertive action is required.

The real virtue, then, is being able to tell which type of situation you’re in and flicking the patience switch accordingly.

There are, however, at least three reasons that’s more difficult to do than it sounds.

The first is that life ebbs and flows. It’s choppy. Chaotic. Full of false starts.

When trying to catch a flight, you might rush to hop in a cab to the airport. But then must wait patiently in the backseat. When you arrive at the terminal, you can quickly hop out and hustle to the check-in. But then must wait in line. It flips back and forth. You rush to security. Then wait. Rush to your gate. Then wait.

Life is constantly flipping between situations where you need to act and ones where there’s nothing you can do but wait patiently. If you don't pay attention to the difference, you end up yelling in lines and honking horns in traffic jams, and generally make waiting far more miserable than it needs to be. For yourself and everyone around you.

The second complicating factor is that patience plays out in a bunch of different ways over a bunch of different time periods. You might be waiting for coffee, for a promotion at work, for something in the mail, for an opportunity to say something, and for the right time to take a leap of faith, all at the same time.

In the cases of waiting for coffee or something in the mail, the answer is easy. Be patient. It takes as long as it takes, so find something productive to do in the meantime. I almost always carry around a book to read, a notepad to write, and my headphones with a podcast ready to go so that I never feel like waiting is wasted time.

Saying something, seeking promotions, and taking leaps of faith are trickier cases because it’s hard to tell the difference between waiting for the right time and stalling for no good reason.

For me it always comes back to asking: are you doing everything you can reasonably be expected to do to get better, lay the groundwork, and speed up the process? It’s easier to be patient in the long-term when you know you’re doing everything you can in the short-term to get there faster.

Which brings me to the third complicating factor: it’s hard to know how long some things should take. Prodigies and late bloomers exist in almost every field. Some companies grow fast. Others take decades to build. “Can your ten-year dream be accomplished in six months, or are you overestimating what can be done in a year?” is a hard question to answer.

That’s why, in the end, it’s not about whether you should be patient. It’s about striking the balance between setting ambitious goals and realistic expectations.

That’s not an easy balance to strike. It’s a line that must be found over and over again. You have to constantly be figuring out what can be done now and what will only come in time.

Because life will always ebb and flow, you must learn to ebb and flow with it. You must hone the ability to flick the patience switch on and off, on and off, again and again, until you’re able to run full out and stop on a dime.

Good things come to those with the patience to persist. But there’s still no time to waste.

Steele