The High RPM Trap
I want level 50 when I'm on level 2
The first time I really noticed my impatience was not in a boardroom or on a baseball field.
It was watching my daughter rush through her homework.
She was moving as fast as she possibly could, skipping steps, trying to get to the end as quickly as possible. The goal was simple. Finish. Move on.
As I watched her, something felt very familiar.
It was me.
I did the same thing as a kid. I rushed through assignments. I hurried through classwork. I wanted to be done more than I wanted to do something well.
And I still do the same thing as an adult. That instinct has followed me for most of my life.
I have always operated at a pretty high RPM.
My engine idles faster than most people I know. I like momentum. I like progress. I like seeing the ball move forward.
In many ways that wiring has served me well. Sports rewarded it. Sales rewarded it. A lot of achievement culture rewards people who push forward aggressively.
The problem is that the same wiring that creates momentum can also create impatience.
For most of my life I confused speed with progress.
What I am starting to realize now is that those two things are not the same.
When the game moves too fast
One of the things coaches say to young athletes is that the game feels fast at first.
When you are new, everything happens quickly. You are reacting to everything. You are trying to keep up.
But eventually something changes.
The game slows down.
Your head comes up. You start seeing the field. You notice things that you completely missed before.
You are no longer pressing. You are playing.
That idea has followed me into adulthood.
When I am rushing, when I am forcing outcomes, my head is down. I miss signals. I overlook details. My performance actually gets worse. I start gripping too tightly.
But when I slow down and take a breath, something interesting happens.
My awareness expands.
I see more. I think more clearly. I make better decisions.
The irony is that slowing down often produces better outcomes than trying to force them.
The level 50 problem
The biggest struggle for me is something I’ve started calling the level 50 problem.
I want level 50 when I am on level 2.
I want mastery immediately.
That impulse shows up everywhere in my life.
When I started cooking, I expected myself to be great almost immediately. I wanted the results of a professional chef without the hours, repetitions, and mistakes that come with learning.
Golf is an even clearer example. I want to be a one handicap golfer. The problem is I am currently about a fifteen handicap and have shown very little patience in putting in the time, repetitions, and work required to level up.
And when I step back and evaluate, I have probably swung a golf club about as many times as Tiger Woods did when he was five years old.
It is absurd to expect mastery without the work.
Yet that expectation shows up again and again.
Financially I want the endgame right now. In my career I want the destination immediately. In new skills I want to skip the apprentice phase and jump straight to mastery.
But life does not work that way.
Every meaningful skill follows the same pattern.
First you are an apprentice. The ego-bruising phase.
Then you are competent. The “I know enough to be dangerous” phase.
Eventually, if you stay with it long enough, you might approach mastery. The quiet phase.
The problem is that impatience refuses to accept that ladder.
What patience actually is
For a long time I thought patience meant waiting.
What I am starting to realize is that patience is something very different.
Patience is restraint.
Patience is composure.
Patience is the discipline of staying fully engaged with the step you are on instead of trying to skip ahead to the next one.
For someone wired like me, that restraint feels like an itch I’m not allowed to scratch. It feels like being stuck in the slow lane when the highway is wide open.
When progress slows down, it feels like standing still. It feels like something is wrong.
But the truth is that slow progress is usually the foundation for durable progress.
You are laying the foundation.
You are strengthening the base.
Without those blocks, the whole structure eventually collapses.
What is funny is that I have experienced this pattern over and over again in my life.
Sports required thousands of repetitions. Sales required years of learning how to read people and understand long cycles. Cooking has taken hundreds of hours of trial and error.
Yet somehow I still forget the pattern every time I start something new. I ignore the examples in my own life where I have gotten better and better over time. It’s like I assumed I was born there.
I want to go from beginner to master in one swing.
I do not know anything that works that way.
The mirror at home
This lesson became unavoidable when that same daughter dropped a bit of insight on me.
As I watched her rush and get frustrated, I caught myself wondering why she does that.
Then the obvious answer hit me.
And it forced me to look inward.
Recently, she said something profound to me.
She said she wanted to be the best version of the level she was on right now.
That idea stopped me in my tracks.
Not the best version of level fifty.
The best version of level two.
There is a lot of wisdom in that.
Slowing down enough to see
Over the past few years I have started to notice something subtle.
As I slow down even slightly, life becomes more vivid.
Maybe it is only one percent more.
Maybe it is one tenth of one percent more.
But it is more than before.
I notice small moments with my kids that I used to rush past. Their laughter. The little jokes they make. The way they get excited about things that adults overlook.
Sometimes I catch myself just taking a mental snapshot.
Instead of immediately moving to the next thing, I sit there for a moment and think to myself that this right here is enough.
I am not perfect at this. Not even close.
I still rush. I still press. I still get frustrated.
But I am a little bit better than I used to be.
And that small shift has changed more than I expected.
When you stop trying to skip the steps, the path becomes clearer.
Not because you suddenly have every answer.
But because you begin to trust that the next step will reveal itself when it needs to.
There is something deeply comforting about that.
For most of my life that uncertainty made me uncomfortable.
Now it feels like part of the process.
I will learn what I need when I need it.
Until then, my job is simple.
Respect the step I am on.
And try to become the best version of it that I can.
- Stephen