Cognitive Patience: Processing The World Without Haste

Have we lost cognitive patience? Have we given up on this valuable skill that allows us to understand and process our reality in a relaxed, yet complex way? According to some neuroscientists, the answer is yes.

You see it everywhere these days, especially when you think about the way we process all the information we get from social media: quickly and without contradictions.

The term cognitive patience was recently coined by Maryanne Wolf. She is a cognitive neuroscientist and psycholinguist at the University of California. In her book, Reader, Come Home , she talks about a fascinating thing that has been happening to her for a long time.

Many readers today cannot read for an hour without checking their phones several times. We have become impatient and lose our ability to concentrate, although we still do not know how serious this is.

Even Stephen King has discussed a new phenomenon: audiobooks. Audiobooks allow you to perform daily tasks while someone with a good voice reads you a book. The effort level is therefore minimal.

As you can guess, cognitive patience is related to our ability to wait or delay gratification. It is our ability to calmly process information, a situation or an event.

It is also a skill we use to give meanings to things by thinking about them beforehand. This also means being able to ignore distractions and focus on a specific goal in peace.

You feel no pressure and know how to put one of your most important skills to good use. We’re talking about attention.

Let’s take a closer look at this.

Cognitive patience is about to die out

‘Skimming’ is another recent phenomenon that is on the rise. It refers to our tendency to read things quickly and only pay attention to the beginning and end of a text or piece of information to find out what it is about.

When you do this, you end up taking in only the most superficial part of what you have in front of you: a book, an article, a manual, and so on.

The opposite of ‘skimming’ is ‘scanning’. Scanning means carefully analyzing information. These two terms also summarize a trend that we see in a large part of the population. This tendency is the loss of an essential skill: cognitive patience.

If you cannot look at the world calmly, you will never understand its secrets. If you’re in a rush to get information from your environment, you could end up with half-truths. And if you don’t use your analytical, critical, and reflective skills, you’ll end up believing things that aren’t true.

We all need to realize that losing our cognitive patience makes us more vulnerable to demagoguery. In a speed-obsessed world governed by the rapid transfer of information, we must be sensible, critical and careful.

Patience is a concentrated effort and it makes us wise

We live in a society that doesn’t value patience. For example, important, powerful people do not have to wait their turn or stand in line.

As children we are told that if we want something, we should go after it. Yes, determination is important. But it is more important to learn to be patient and to understand that success and wisdom take time.

• If you want to become cognitively patient, you must realize that patience does not give you power over your circumstances. What it does do is give you more control over yourself, no matter the circumstances.
• Cognitive patience also involves relearning how to see the world through a child’s eyes. You have to regain that fascination, curiosity and instinctive appreciation for details and nuances.
• You also have to be very critical. Be guided by a desire for knowledge and your search for the truth about what you see, hear and read.

• It is also worth remembering that cognitive patience is not a passive skill. On the contrary. No process requires so much effort, spontaneity and open-mindedness.
• In addition, a study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology states that using this skill every day reduces your risk of depression and other mood disorders.

It is also the best answer to life ‘s daily challenges. If you are patient and learn to process the world in peace, you will be better able to appreciate all the magical details, beauty and truth in the world.

Work on your attention and discover how wonderful it is to be unhurried for once. Remember, too, that patience ultimately just means focusing your efforts on a goal.