Lately, I’ve noticed a significant decline in my patience. Honestly, this might be a lifelong trait, one I’ve had since childhood. I approach everything with a compulsion to finish it within a single day. A prime example of this extreme tendency is gaming. Once I start a game, I feel compelled to see it through to the end. With RPGs, for instance, even though stopping at level 20 to get some sleep would be perfectly reasonable, I’d often stay up for over a day, foregoing sleep, simply because I needed to reach level 60 to unlock the skills I wanted to use. Becoming a developer only solidified this habit; working past overtime into the early hours of the morning became routine, all to achieve the peace of mind that comes from completing a feature entirely. This also explains why I rarely eat meals at set times; instead, I’ll only eat once I’ve reached a pre-defined checkpoint.

I feel this tendency has become even more pronounced recently because the actual time spent developing has significantly shortened since the emergence of LLMs. Whereas before, I might have spent an entire day developing a single feature, nowadays there’s a strong inclination to try and build five features in a single day. While this has dramatically improved productivity and work density, it has also intensified my compulsion for tasks to be completed within an ever-shorter timeframe. Consequently, my ability to patiently and thoroughly stick with a single, slower task seems to have weakened. Even writing a single blog post naturally takes several hours, and building muscle through exercise requires months of consistent effort. Yet, I find myself increasingly unable to tolerate such slower paces.

Excluding areas where LLMs can offer assistance, the value of consistency is paramount for various forms of growth, be it health, diet, or personal development. However, because of the aforementioned tendency, I tend to give up easily if I don’t see results in the short term. I believe that in such situations, what’s truly needed is a steadfast perseverance, patience, and the ability to wait – qualities that are easier said than done. Lately, however, since completing my blog, the habit of jotting down notes whenever an idea strikes and then writing posts myself seems to be providing a small degree of training. While writing a post takes several hours, and I might ordinarily consider such a time commitment wasteful or inefficient for other tasks, the inherently slow nature of writing appears to be training me to overcome those very thoughts.