Things Take the Time They Take: A 42nd Thought at 42

Two years ago I shared 40 thoughts as I turned 40, and last year I added a 41st thought. So as I make my 42nd lap around the sun, I figured I'd throw another thought onto the pile.

42. Things take the time they take

When I was working at R/GA, someone (I can't remember who) said something along the lines of:

You can't make a baby in one month by throwing nine people at it.

Despite this reality, I've witnessed so many cleverly attempt to hack it over the years. None have worked, and I've found the "good, fast, cheap: pick two." triangle continues to be true.

But with each passing year, time feels more compressed and our expectation of immediacy grows proportionally. The digital world introduced near-immediate abundance, which shaped our behavior, package delivery timeframes, and our willingness to wait for damn near anything. Give us another couple years and we'll all fail the fucking marshmallow test.

Creating things has become easier and more immediate as well. We now have a new paradigm of tools that allow us to generate things instantaneously. Our expectations of immediacy will shift yet again. Don't get me wrong, this convenience and immediacy can be incredible and unlock exciting new opportunities, but there are certainly costs involved.

Even though we have an arsenal of efficiency-optimizing tools and tactics at our fingertips, I've learned that when it comes to human endeavors: quality things take time the time they take.

Quality takes time to cook

Quality takes time to cook. I've learned this from putting our courses together, doing client work, writing a book, throwing a big concert, and applying myself to grand new ideas.

Through these efforts I've learned I personally can't sacrifice quality, even for things I explicitly say I'm going to cut some corners on to get out the door relatively quickly. Others might be able to dial back the quality knob to better fit the constraints of time & money, but it seems like I can't.

It's an unavoidable truth: to do big and important things takes a lot of time and energy sustained over a long period. The trick is to allow yourself to be ok with things taking the time they need to take. When I fight this statement of fact is when I get frustrated, feel guilty, feel ashamed, or feel like giving up because I'm not seeing immediate results. Complicating matters is other people's expectations of immediacy to see my results, which I still struggle with.

But for the most part, I've accepted the fact that things take the time they take. Things will get done, they will be good, and I'll do the hard work along the way to move things forward and bring ideas to life.

Front and back burner projects

In our work, I've adopted a vernacular of front burner projects and back burner projects. Our front-burner projects are the big important ones that are paying the bills and require the majority of our attention. A lot of back burner projects are the bigger ideas that can cook slowly, but you still have to occasionally stir the pot. The front burner projects eventually get done, and eventually some of those back burner projects graduate up onto the front burner.

What I've found is to allow yourself to keep stirring the pot and feel how you feel about something week over week. I've found that creating a working cadence (weekly, monthly, or otherwise) can help sustain that effort, iterate over ideas, and evolve things from idea into reality. It takes discipline to allow these things to take the time they take, but I feel like these lighter touches over longer stretches of time give things time to settle in and evolve at the necessary pace.

Valuing efforts that require time

With the rise of all this instant gratification, I hope we'll find ourselves valuing things that have clearly taken time to make. My family loves watching time lapse videos of art projects that take months and months — pencil drawings, canvases, murals, stuff that clearly requires sustained effort to arrive at a finished result. It's in the time lapse process that you can better appreciate the finished piece.

So yeah, it took me 42 years to arrive at this specific lesson, so there we go. And my advice is to just acknowledge that fact, and notice when you find yourself feeling frustrated, guilty, ashamed, or like giving up because you're not seeing immediate results in your work, your life, your relationships, and your endeavors. Things take the time they take.