Over the weekend I jumped in the car and went for a leisurely drive. During my ride, Tom Petty’s “The Waiting” came on. While belting out “Yeah, the waiting is the hardest part,” I became curious. Why do we struggle so much with waiting?
“In the United States, we absolutely think of our time as an individual—and also as our scarcest resource,” says Jason Farman, a professor at the University of Maryland and author of Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World. “When we imagine a productive time—time being used wisely, time being used well—waiting is contrary to all of that.”
