Strategic Patience: 11 Advantages When You Wait Before Acting

The easy move when a problem confronts you is to act right away.

We encourage taking action because it is tangible, and we can check a problem off the list, even if it is not solved. You won't find many people who will argue with, “I did something about that right away!”

Pausing, hesitating, and downright stalling in the face of a problem?

Well, that comes off as laziness, inattention, or even indifference.

11 Advantages When You Wait Before Acting

But there ARE advantages to strategic patience and to not acting right away, such as:

• Others may resolve the problem because they feel ownership for it
• The hyper anxiety over the problem could die down
• You may have time to think of a simple answer
• Others may supply you with the right answer
• Someone else could step up to solve it - for the good and bad that involves
• The problem may be forgotten by tomorrow
• It may no longer be relevant
• Circumstances may remove the downsides you face in addressing the problem
• You could discover that the new situations resulting from the problem are ACTUALLY better than the old one
• You can develop a solution with a fresher perspective later
• An unexpected situation may be putting you in a BETTER position than you had previously

I cannot put a specific percentage on the number of times strategic patience will work better than acting right away. But based on my own history and predisposition to pause (which sounds better than “wait”), it is significant. And it seems to be getting higher as peoples’ stress levels lead to more perceived problems and less inclination toward strategic patience.

Strategic Patience - Wait for It

So join me in exercising strategic patience more frequently to give yourself time to see what happens. I'll wait while you decide. – Mike Brown

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