The last century keeps teaching us things we refuse to unlearn. The 1960s and 1970s did more than invent music and fashion. They taught practical muscles of patience that most fast culture now mistakes for laziness or naivety. This is not nostalgia. It is a case study in tempo. If you want a clearer head and a project that lasts longer than a news cycle read on.
Why those decades matter more than you think
People talk about the 1960s and 1970s as though they were a single mood. They were chaotic sure. But also methodical. There was a steady insistence that some outcomes cannot be rushed. Look at urban planning, small press publishing, independent record labels, or the school movements of the time. They were slow processes with stubborn payoffs. You do not arrive at enduring change by sprinting. You arrive by letting time do part of the work that willpower cannot.
Not the slow of lethargy but the slow of calibration
There is a difference between waiting and calibrating while waiting. A gardener does not simply stand still. They test the earth. In the sixties and seventies people built procedures and institutions that had to breathe and adapt over years. That slow breathing is a type of competence. It is a refusal to substitute urgency for judgment. I am partial to this kind of patience because I have seen its returns in odd places. Small presses from the seventies became literary estates that matter now. Community campaigns that seemed to stall ended up changing city bylaws. That is not coincidence. It is time tested work.
Grit is passion and perseverance for very long term goals.
Duckworth makes the point neatly. Patience is not passive. It is stylistic stubbornness married to method. The 60s and 70s supplied craft rules for that marriage.
How patience was practised back then
There were practices. They look messy on paper. People kept letters and they read them. They built newsletters and they printed them slowly. They canvassed door to door then followed up for years. These methods relied on human friction not algorithms. They required negotiation and repetition. The payoff was durable because the approach assumed humans will forget and institutions will drift. So they built reminders into the culture. That is a tactical lesson for anyone who wants results that last.
Concrete habits you can borrow
Try this. Pick one small project and impose a seventies rhythm on it. Weekly notes. Monthly face to face check ins. Annual review that does not pretend to predict but to account. These rhythms force you to notice slippage rather than panic about it. The trick is less romantic than it sounds. It is about creating lag time where error can be rebalanced rather than amplified. I have used this on creative projects and it works because it cuts the heat out of decisions that would otherwise be rushed into bad compromises.
What we were really measuring with the marshmallow studies was not simply willpower. It was how children find ways to make situations work for them.
Mischel pointed to a critical feature of patience. It is situational intelligence. The 60s and 70s trained people to nudge situations rather than merely to brace against them. That is an actionable attitude today. It means if you want better outcomes you change the environment and the timeline not just your mood.
Three ways modern life mangles patience
First there is instantaneous validation. Second there is the value system that equates speed with competence. Third there is attention fragmentation. These three together create a feedback loop that incentivises immediate outcomes over sustained processes. The sixties and seventies were not immune to impulsiveness, but their infrastructures resisted it more successfully. That resistance was not moralising. It was pragmatic.
I am not saying nostalgia is strategy
Do not misread me. I am not proposing a wholesale revival of past aesthetics or a simple return to typewriters. The point is selective. Adapt the structural patience that delivered long term returns without bringing back the worst bits. Learn the forms of delay that increase information not frustration. That is the useful inheritance.
Why this still matters for careers and communities
When you treat work as a sequence of measured bets rather than a queue of deliverables you change outcomes. Careers become portfolios of accumulative value. Communities build norms and institutions that outlast committees. The seventies showed that building often meant waiting which meant learning and then acting with more confidence. This is an inconvenient truth for anyone chasing instant elevation. I am unapologetic about preferring practitioners who understand time to those who only understand tempo.
Patience as selective persistence
Patience is not for everything. It is a choice we make about what deserves long term commitment. The cultural failure now is the tendency to apply instant feedback to projects that require slow calibration. Not every choice merits a decade but some do. The older decades had a discrimination mechanism for that. They were better at asking whether something deserved the long view at all.
Small experiments to test this idea
Run a six month experiment where you impose a seventies style cadence on one area of life. Keep notes in physical form. Meet the people involved in person when possible. Resist the urge to optimise constantly. See what shifts. My experience is that the first three months feel stagnant and then after that patterns emerge that reward steady attention. That swing is under appreciated because we live in a narrative economy that prefers beginnings to middles.
Conclusion
The 60s and 70s taught patience as a practiced craft and not as moral sternness. They left behind models of lag time that allowed work to incubate and communities to knit themselves into enduring forms. That is the gift worth reclaiming. It is not fashionable to say patience out loud anymore but the return on it often shows up in places that flash attention cannot reach. If you want outcomes that matter you need to learn how to wait around the right things and to keep working while you do.
| Lesson | What it looked like in the sixties and seventies | How to try it now |
|---|---|---|
| Patience as craft | Long form publishing and face to face organising. | Set a slow cadence and keep physical records. |
| Situational intelligence | Designing environments that support goals. | Change context not just willpower. |
| Selective persistence | Deciding which projects deserve long term attention. | Run a six month trial before scaling. |
| Durability over virality | Building institutions that outlast trends. | Measure for years not clicks. |
FAQ
How can I tell which projects deserve patient attention?
Start by asking whether the work produces compounding returns. If small consistent actions produce growth over time then it is a candidate for patient investment. Look for projects that require iteration not single hits. Secondly check whether the work needs relationships. If people are central then patience becomes a practical necessity. Finally experiment with a pilot timeline. If you can plausibly test meaningful indicators in six months then commit to that window before deciding to quit.
Isn’t fast action sometimes better?
Yes. Speed matters in crises and in markets where windows close quickly. The point is to be selective. Use speed when the payoffs favour agility. Use patience when the payoff accrues from iteration and trust. The problem is not speed itself. The problem is the cultural habit of defaulting to speed for everything.
How do I maintain motivation during long timelines?
Break large aims into small observable actions that produce feedback. Create rituals that mark progress. Keep a public or private record that shows incremental change. The seventies practice of keeping newsletters and journals is useful here. Also reclaim slower forms of reward such as letters or face to face acknowledgement. They change the texture of waiting.
Can patience be taught to organisations?
Yes. Organisations can redesign incentives to reward long term value over quarterly spectacle. That means different metrics and different communication rhythms. It also means leaders modelling the behaviour by tolerating ambiguity while enforcing accountability. The seventies did this imperfectly but tangibly. The lesson remains implementable today.
What if I end up waiting for the wrong thing?
That risk exists. That is why selective criteria matter. Set review points and be willing to pivot. Patience is not an excuse to avoid judgements. It is a commitment to making better judgements by giving time some say in the verdict. If a project repeatedly fails signal tests then it is okay to stop. The art is knowing when to stop and when to keep going.
