Entrepreneurs nowadays are an impatient bunch. We want things to happen fast. We live and swear by mantras such as “Do More. Faster.” We want to leave our mark, have impact and make a dent in the universe — often discounting the time and energy that is required to do it.
I am one of those entrepreneurs.
It’s like we are standing at the foot of a mountain looking at the effect that we want to have or the success we want to feel when we reach the peak. And we’re continuously looking for faster ways to scale the mountain — we hire helicopters or invent climbing machines that get us up there quicker. What we fail to see is… the mountain.
We know where we are and we know where we want to be — and yet we often can’t seem to understand the journey. And important, impactful journeys take time, patience and grit. Journeys can also be treacherous; there is a reason why there is one main route up Mount Everest.
Give a lot of yourself to a small number of things instead of giving a little bit of yourself to a large number of causes — big problems which yield big rewards require patience, determination and grit.