The Pursuit of Patience

The more I stay in this job, the shorter my patience is. Seriously.

When deadlines are counted not in weeks, not days, but in HOURS... every second becomes important.

Every decision starts taking on consequences - do I eat lunch to power through the day, but it's 1.30pm and 2pm requires a few lines... you get the point.

And because time is so tight, I have no patience for long chats.

The brutal nature of broadcast is that you spend very little time actually talking to your interviewee, trying to get to the bottom of things. Because ultimately, that 30 minute interview is going to turn up as a 20-second soundbite.

And so, sadly, I'm starting to apply that to my life. I find myself increasingly cutting people off mid-sentence.

Like my brain is on auto-mode, and if my brain assesses that your sentence is going nowhere, I jump in with questions. If you start rattling, I get impatient and try to divert the conversation to something more interesting. Skip the soliloquies please, and just get to the point.

ZW hates that. I can't entirely blame him. He thinks I'm not listening. He's wrong - I'm just selectively listening.

Shit, I have the attention span of a cockel spaniel.