How to Use Aggressive Patience to Develop Skills Efficiently

Have you ever tried to build a skill, but you quickly gave up on it because it was taking a long time? Or have you ever tried building a skill, but you wasted months making no progress? It happens to the best of us. I’ve experienced both obstacles when trying to build skills. So, I decided to take a different approach to skill-building. I created an approach that I call aggressive patience.

Now, you might be thinking, “Aggressive patience. That doesn’t make any sense. How can you be aggressive and patient at the same time?”

You see, aggressive patience isn’t a contradiction. It is a perfect description of my strategy for building skills. You can be patient while still making changes to increase your progress.

Read on to find out more about how this is possible.

What is aggressive patience?

Aggressive patience is the ability to be patient when working on developing a skill. While at the same time, being able to change your plan if it isn’t working. If you realize that you aren’t making the progress that you could, you pivot.

These changes are not drastic changes unless they need to be. They are mostly small changes to put you back on track.

Being aggressively patient is all about making smart decisions. Make them soon after you learn that they need to be made.

If you realize you haven’t made progress for a few days or a week, then hold off on making a change. Being patient is about playing the long game. But you also need to recognize when you’re being too patient. Around a month is usually enough time to recognize if you aren’t making progress.

It’s all about being flexible with your plan.

How much aggressive patience should you have?

There is a fine line between being too patient and not being patient enough. This fine line is different for every skill you’re trying to build. You have to accept that you might not make progress for several weeks or months. But you also need to be able to recognize when you could be making better progress.

Knowing how aggressively patient you can be is a skill in its own right. The best way to learn how aggressively patient you can be is to do a lot of research on the skill you’re trying to build. Your research will tell you everything you need to know about building your skill. What you need to do. How long it should take. How long it takes to see progress. What ways you can speed up your progress. How to measure your progress. Things you can learn from other people’s mistakes. And so on.

If you do enough research, you’ll know the time frame it should take you to build the skill. Or at least to get to your first milestone.

Recognize the trends of your progress over time. Compare them to the amount of progress you could make according to your research. Track your progress if it’s measurable.

If you don’t know how much progress you should be making, be careful with changing up your plan. Wait a few weeks to a month to see what happens. If you feel like you’ve made no progress after that point, then making a change will likely benefit you.

Here’s an example of aggressive patience…

Let’s say you wanted to lose weight. You find out that you should lose 1lb per week and you should be in a 500-calorie deficit each day. You set a goal of losing 30 pounds. If you lost 1 lb per week, it should take you 30 weeks to accomplish your goal. The first few weeks go well. You hop on the scale and discover that you’ve lost 5 lbs already. But then the next month doesn’t go so well, and you only lost 1 lb.

By knowing that you should lose 1 lb per week, you realize that you aren’t eating in a 500-calorie deficit each day. So, you pivot your weight loss strategy. You check your TDEE and find out that you should be eating less calories. So, you make the change and lower your calories. After another month, you’ve lost 4 lbs. And you’re back on the right path. That’s how you execute aggressive patience.

Because you did your research, you knew how much progress you could make. So, you knew that when you weren’t making that amount of progress, something needed to change.

Why should you use this strategy?

You should use this strategy because it will help prevent you from wasting your time. This strategy keeps you making progress. Granted, plateaus do happen when building skills sometime. Research to find out what you should do to break through plateaus for the skill you’re trying to build. And research how long progress plateaus typically last for this skill.

Sometimes waiting a few weeks to a month is all you need to get back on track. If the plateau goes beyond that point, something might need to change. Unless the skill takes longer to see progress.

Aggressive patience gives you the mindset necessary to overcome obstacles in your way. You’ll know how to keep the ball rolling.

It gives you the freedom to take chances. To improve your progress. And to maximize the time you spend working on the skill.

Who doesn’t want to make faster progress?

It gives you flexibility...

Here’s another reason why you should use this strategy: How do you apply new information to your plan? What happens when you learn about something you didn’t know when you started building the skill?

Because you’re aggressively patient, your plan is flexible. This allows you to add new information into your plan. You’re not stuck doing the same things when you know there’s something better you can do.

It’s usually a good idea to apply new information to your plan if you believe it will benefit you. But be careful to not fall into the new information trap. The internet provides limitless information. It’s easy to find new information that contradicts what you’re currently doing. Double check the information you’re thinking about applying into your plan before you do it.

Sometimes information overload can cause us to try too many new things. It causes us to be too aggressive.

Remember that you’ve got to be patient as well. Most skills take a significant amount of time to build. It can some time before you notice the progress that a change to your plan is helping you make.

Wrapping up

Aggressive patience is a strategy to maximize your progress when building a skill. It prevents you from wasting time.

Research, research, research.

Doing research will give you a good idea how quickly you should be making progress. Use aggressive patience to stay on track with your progress.

Each skill takes a different amount of time to build. And each step along the way to building the skill takes a different amount of time.

Be patient and trust that you will make progress. Wait at least a few weeks to a month before changing what you’re doing.

Use this strategy to improve your progress in any skill you’re building!