Due to an increasing reliance on new technologies, Americans are growing more and more impatient. On the other side of the ocean, the phenomenon is less pronounced.
Bestseller Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is trash. I barely made it through 100 pages before I gave up. However, in a point largely shared by the media, author Wolf shares an insight into President Trump’s characteristically orange hair. According to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, the president is unable to let his hair color product sit for the full five minutes recommended. Impatience is the reason for Trump’s orange-blond hair: the longer it’s left on, the darker the hair color.
Personally, I’m an impatient individual. The same is true of my husband, and our son Yann has poor frustration management skills that are certainly linked to the impatience genes he got from us. However, once I relocated to the US, I was struck by the pace of life in Washington, New York, and every big American city I’ve visited.
Memories of my first weeks in the country are strongly connected to my firsthand experience of the American “time is money” cliché. Shopping during the week? No need to wait at the register. Buying furniture? Delivered the next day. Visiting Disneyland in Florida? Buy the Fast Pass and skip the line!
Are Americans really that impatient?
According to a survey by the Curious Bank, more than half of Americans hang up the phone after being kept on hold for one minute or less, while 96% will knowingly consume extremely hot food or drinks that burn their mouths.
According to another study, 45% of American millennials say technology has made them more impatient today than they were five years ago. In the same survey, 41% said they wouldn’t wait longer than 15 minutes for a Uber and only 26% are prepared to wait more than 30 minutes for takeout.
Why can’t Americans wait?
Skipping the line at the movie theater is now possible, thanks to online purchasing. Mobile apps like Uber give minute-by-minute updates about where your driver is before arrival. Movies and TV shows stream within seconds on most platforms while social media allows anyone from President Trump to average citizens to share their opinion, anger, or frustration instantly.
Now, being online constantly is possible with smartphones. My stepdaughter Amélie is almost 13 and doesn’t understand why I don’t answer every text message immediately. My husband also doesn’t get why I don’t always answer the phone.
According to the Fetch and YouGov study I mentioned before, 45% of millennials are more impatient today than they were five years ago due to their reliance on new technology.
At the top of the list is having to interact with an automated responder (or a bot if online)!
What are possible consequences of impatience?
A famous test conducted in the 1960s gives us a stunning answer. In the Marshmallow experiment, 4-year-old children were given one marshmallow and promised another one if they could wait and not eat the first. The researchers followed the children into adolescence and found that the patient children were better adjusted and scored significantly better on the SAT.
The desire for instant gratification has downsides. In the US, the absence of quick results is often associated with failure and favors action over reflection.
Impatience also creates many misunderstandings in business relationships between Germans and Americans. For more info, please consult my previous entry, “Time Management: American Speed Vs. German Meticulousness”
I also can’t help feeling that, at least in the urban hubs of the East or West Coast, free time is associated with losing money. Otherwise, why does everyone rush through their days, weeks, and weekends? I talked at length about this idea in another post, “Do All Americans Live Like Time Is Money?”
Is growing impatience strictly an American problem?
Besides my own observations, I was eager to find a similar survey about impatience in Germany, France, or more generally Europe. I haven’t found a lot. But, I found this dataset particularly interesting. In a 2016 survey published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, Germans participants were asked to decide between $3,400 cash immediately or $3,800 in a month.
Surprisingly, 89% of the respondents decided to wait.
What would you have chosen—an instant reward or more money?
Photo credit: Fotolia
For an 11.7% ROI waiting one month? Only if you are so old you can’t buy green bananas should you take the money today. But I’m a baby boomer, albeit with a strong need to accomplish something every day else I’d feel that a day was wasted.
I would have taken the money. Even without considering the ROI!