In the modern world, people are faced with the challenge of learning patience more than any time before. Simple skills like listening and focusing for an extended period of time have become super skills that few young people have. When delving into why this is, you notice that younger generations are exposed to a plethora of information that can be accessed with ease. This information is also being delivered in increasingly shorter formats to engage an audience with an ever decreasing attention span. This evolution of modern technology has resulted in people struggling more than ever to learn new skills and handle the frustration of not getting results quickly. In contrast to modern technology, golf requires the ability to be patient in the learning of new movements and the understanding of certain concepts. Developing patience and focus are therefore super skills that can separate you from other athletes.
A lack of patience can often be correlated to a fixation on outcome. This is our key! The understanding that fixation on outcome distracts you from focus on the present. Patience in, and focus on the present moment become so much more difficult when your attention is on an uncertain result. Shifting attention to the outcomes within your reach will prove a good starting point. When I say "within your reach" I quite literally mean the very next task In front of you! When we frame our success based on whether we are the person we aim to be a year from now, we set ourselves up for failure. Patience is not easy in the face of failure so changing how we frame success can help to foster that patience.
The real task comes with implementing what we learn, building our attention spans and levels of patience is not easy when both are fundamental to our learning ability. Therefore, approaching this task is best done by starting small and working your way up. Setting yourself a challenge that only takes one minute to complete is an acceptable starting point. That may sound too easy but you would be surprised by how difficult it is to really zone in for one minute or to be patient enough to wait one minute for a result. This approach allows for a high chance of success and therefore increased willingness to improve further. The difficulty of this process varies with personal preference or passion. It will be easier to focus on a task you are more passionate about than one that you are not. The same goes for your level of patience with tasks that you enjoy more to ones you do not. This can be backed up by the popularity of content such as YouTube shorts, videos that last longer than a few minutes are rarely watched from start to end by a casual viewer. It would have been crazy to think that just over a decade since YouTube gained popularity it would be needing to drastically change its content delivery to maintain an interested audience. The real issue stems from the habits we all (as casual viewers) are building through relying on short formed information and content. There comes a point where it may even be difficult to fully focus on one 20 second video start to finish. This all leaks into other aspects of our lives and can make learning and developing oneself increasingly difficult.
My proposition is not to blanket yourself from social media but simply to engage with it and other tasks in your life. Watch that 1 minute YouTube short video, just do it with intent and focus to takeaway what you can instead of mindlessly scrolling to the next video. Challenge yourself to watch longer and longer forms of content and track your progress and ability to stay engaged. This remains true for other aspects of your life that require attention and patience. Standing over the final putt of what could be the round of your life requires these skills. Presenting a crucial presentation that could secure your career path does to. We need to adapt to the times but not let it control us. For the first time ever, patience is a super-skill... maintain it if you have it, build it up if you don't.
Let me know how you get on!
