Secret to life : Patience

In this age of broadband speed, we want things quick, we want them fast.

But seriously, does the few minutes, or seconds, we gain, really mean a whole lot? In Korea, I hear that if a website takes more than 4 seconds to load, people would go to a competitor. In Singapore, it's probably around there too - else, we're clicking on reload, hitting the pedestrian crossing button, cursing, swearing and so on.

Of course, you could argue that all those seconds add up and in a whole life, you could have actually given yourself an extra week to enjoy. Enjoy what? Rushing around I guess.

Mum and Dad have GPSes in their cars and if you enter the destination, it will, besides telling you how to get there, also tell you what your arrival time is. From experience, it's quite accurate - quite a nifty piece of data crunching going on in that little box huh. Well anyway, this piece of time information (e.g. 10:47) has taught me one thing - no matter how fast you drive, no matter how many people you overtake, no matter how many close accidents you avoid, the estimated arrival time hardly changes - at most you shave off a minute (e.g. 10:46). Conclusion: no point rushing around.

I've learnt to slow down, take it easy. When you're on the way somewhere, you're in transition (driving, walking, sitting on a train) and you should be enjoying that moment when you're not really doing anything anyway.