‘Patience is a virtue.’ A commonly known piece of wisdom which has been repeated to us many times (certainly to me). Sometimes things do not happen immediately, and by rushing them and forcing the end result we merely undermine the quality of our work and sabotage our chances of achieving the best possible result. This seems to indicate that slow heat is better than fast heat and doing things over a long stretch of time may well yield better results than last-minute frantic insertions (though see my previous blog on the advantages of the latter). It is difficult, however, to be patient all the time, especially in our busy lives where we are constantly on a tight schedule to get things done and there is simply no time to waste by waiting around. Often it does boil down to: Get it done now or nothing. The quick pace of modern life has bred a lot of impatience in us, and this has a knock-on negative effect not only on the quality of our work but also on our mental state, as we often end up being anxious and hyper-sensitive when things do not go our way immediately. As mentioned before, I like multitasking, since it allows me to eliminate a lot of dead space in my time management, and another advantage of alternating between tasks is that it also removes a lot of stress in me, since rather than biting my nails waiting for something to happen, I can perhaps let the process take care of itself, which is sometimes essential for getting the best results (as the saying goes in cooking, let it brew/breathe), and I can use the waiting-time to tend to some other task(s) waiting for me to do. The numerous advantages of this form of multitasking include time efficiency, quality enhancement, and most importantly mental health since I find it much more comforting to just let things go for a bit while concentrating on some other thing. It really improves my mood when I switch effortlessly between tasks, and when I get back to the original task, it always looks much better to me after having breathed for a while and I can approach it with fresh eyes and make it even better. Really not bad at all.