Socien's Blog

I realised I needed what I called a lost-and-found approach in an article on imagination and creativity to spark my creativity. I have since adopted the tactic as a measure to escape writer’s block. Using the tactic, I let myself worry not when I find myself with nothing to write. I can lose a whole month without writing anything; in July 2024, I didn’t write anything.

During the lost phase I discover not only new topics by methods through which my technique can be improved. I come back a brand new ink to spill. I have learned that while I wonder, lost, I always get to observe something that would have missed by sticking to focus.

Good decision-making can happen when you let yourself wander and look at a broad spectrum of facts, opinions, questions and answers. Thus, J. Tolkien had to caution us in The Fellowship of the Ring”, “All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost.”

When things seem off-road new paths are discovered. It is the wanderer who gives himself no burden of attachment to a method or a way of thinking. He knows that attachment to a thing will harm you when the thing fails you. A wanderer is, therefore, a man who is only patient when there is such a rare need for him to be, always on the loose and always finding himself. In short, his approach is a lost-and-found one. It sparks his imagination.

We live in a world where features a trying man would better arm himself do not always produce good results. In the jungle, a cheetah’s speed is a resource other predators envy at a distance, but in the case of the prey pulling out a dummy of the century, higher speeds will require a good braking distance. In short, distance is not always a good thing for the cheetah.  Patience is like what speed is to the cheetah.

You will need a lot of patience but a lot of it can produce undesirable results in and out of one sometimes. I am comfortable doing one thing just because I have classified myself as one who has patience. But beyond that, I am insulated against anything out there that might work. Why is that so?

Patience, I believe, is the practice of postponing the need for results while putting urgency in efforts at your work—pursuing one major at all costs without losing the zeal when a battle of unending attrition presents itself. Patience is giving up on giving up. It is a feature one who is to be successful needs. It is an approach poor starters and people pursuing mentally and physically challenging things needs. But patience has its wrong side.

Although patience involves trying multiple approaches in pursuit of a goal and its subgoals,  it is focusing on one goal. Our inspirational speakers, writers and the education systems encourage us to focus. But already in focusing, there are downsides. In Chip and Dan Heath’s Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work we are encouraged to “think about visual analogy,” because “when we focus we sacrifice peripheral vision.”

Patience will make you miss seeing some other things essential to make your take-off possible. It shuts you out to the outside realities like a hermit kingdom, develops passions and makes you forget that success mostly comes through purpose and rarely through the pursuit of a passion.

In the end, some people who fail are among those who have been patient in their lives. Success is complex. You will never know what it wants. Most will get it through patience. But some can be lucky to have it through impatience. In the pursuit of success, men make a gamble that knows no experts.