Urgent And Patient Work – A Work in Progress – The Climb #591

Monday 5^th October 2020

I’ve had a minor revelation about myself that whilst not earth shattering and far from concrete.

Whilst this idea is still solidifying, I’m coming to the conclusion that there are two sorts of work: work that requires urgency and work that requires patience. Fixing a leak would be urgent work, loosing weight would be patient work.

And whilst people are a little of both (due to the situation at hand) I think they are naturally more suited to one rather than the other.

There are those that excel at urgent work. They tend to jump right in, make mistakes as they go and iterate. The start quickly but get bored just as quick. And then there are those that are patient: they take time to consider all options, weigh them up and only then act, often a bit at a time.

Writing a book is generally patient work. There’s no way you could write a book in a single sitting. Instead it must be done bit by bit. People who pants novels are a bit more urgent workers.

Here’s the thing though: I’ve noticed that whilst playing Warcraft, I’m naturally a patient worker and I think that’s why I struggle to make gold. I could have certain items already on the auction house, but instead, I’m building up resources day by day, waiting for when I think the market could be best. Except, I could have made money and either continued to ride the high, or switch to something else. Instead I wait patiently until it’s too late.

I’ve often heard it said that you should work with macro patience, and micro speed but I think I’m a bit too much a patient worker.

That’s brilliant for novels and developing processes that turns them out on time, but not so good for things like Warcraft Goldmaking.

Now I can list a hundred different reasons why I’m a patient worker – urgent work doesn’t really work for me – but I feel I’m missing out here. And I’m not just talking about making gold in World of Warcraft. I’m talking about that adaptability.

Some of the social media things I want to do, and haven’t done so far, are because I’m a patient worker. Everything is planned and ready to go. And it’s not like I’m procrastinating – that would be if I planned to do something and hadn’t started it. No, this is me deciding to wait as part of a strategy.

I need to be a bit more of an urgent worker. I need to identify tasks that are suited to urgent work and then move on them. And an urgent task could be for a patient piece of work. There’s a distinct difference, and perhaps urgent and patient aren’t the best descriptors. I’m still working this through in my own head.

The temptation is to organise my thinking before acting on it, but there’s another part of me that’s telling me to step out of my comfort zone and embrace a bit of urgent work. Whether that be getting my auction house sales going today, or starting some new project knowing that all the pieces aren’t yet in place, I feel I’m letting some opportunities escape me by sometimes being too patient.