06/06/2026
Nicky told me off the other day for getting annoyed at Netflix.
I wanted to watch a film, and the "spinning wheel of doom" was going round and round while it decided whether or not it fancied showing what I’d chosen. There I was, sat on the sofa, muttering “come on… how long does this take?” at an inanimate object.
Which is slightly ridiculous when you think about it. I can choose almost any film ever made, press a button, and have it in my living room within seconds… and yet if it takes a few moments longer than expected, it feels like something’s gone wrong.
It’s not just Netflix either. Amazon takes more than a day and you start to wonder what’s happening behind the scenes. The kettle suddenly feels like a bit of a faff when the hot water tap will do it instantly. And I’ll happily convince myself that ordering on Deliveroo makes perfect sense because it’s “quicker” than cooking - despite the fact I’ll then spend the same amount of time waiting for it to arrive.
It did get me thinking about how different things used to feel. I remember my parents making a whole day's entertainment day of the Sunday papers, sitting there for hours, working their way through them without any sense that they should be doing something else at the same time. And cooking from scratch wasn’t a conscious decision to slow things down or be wholesome—it was just how you cooked. Things took time, and no one seemed particularly troubled by that.
Now, any gap gets filled. If there’s a spare minute, out comes the phone. If something pauses, even briefly, we reach for a distraction. It turns out that’s not just a harmless habit—it’s actually changing how we’re wired.
I read an article recently that said the brain needs 7 seconds to reset after an interruption. 7 seconds doesn’t sound like much at first, but when you think about how often your phone pings in a day, it starts to add up. It’s no wonder that waiting even a short while for something starts to feel uncomfortable.
I suppose that’s the bit that’s changed. It’s not that things are necessarily slower - it’s that we’ve lost the habit of waiting.
The irony is that, when I think about it, the things that have really worked out well for me - whether in business or just in life - haven’t been the ones I’ve rushed. They’re the ideas that needed a bit of time to settle, the conversations that developed over a few meetings rather than one, the decisions where I didn’t feel the need to jump immediately.
They’ve all probably taken longer than I probably would have liked at the time… but they’ve also turned out better because of it.
So maybe the answer isn’t to get frustrated when things take a little longer than we expect. Maybe it’s to get a bit more comfortable with the idea that not everything needs to happen instantly.
Because as much as that spinning wheel on Netflix might test your patience… some things are worth the wait.
As the Guiness advert used to say ... good things come to those who wait.
Slainte.
