On Patience

The gardener may water with a hundred buckets, yet the fruit arrives only in its season. —An ancient saying I just made up (but probably exists in a forgotten corner of the world where wisdom isn't peer reviewed)

We live in a world of real-time dashboards and weekly sprint cycles. Metrics blink by the minute, hypotheses are tested and invalidated within days, and our roadmaps are often mistaken for Gantt charts. But some things—perhaps the things that matter most—simply won’t be rushed.

I remind myself of this when the outcomes stall, when the charts don’t curve the right way, or when a project that once felt extremely promising slips into the grey waiting room of uncertainty. It is the time to test your conviction.

Back in 2018 at Uber, I lived this truth in a way that only time could validate. It was a turbulent season. The headlines were grim, and drivers had—how shall I put this—notes. Inside HQ, the driver product team was not lounging about sipping LaCroix. No, we were toiling away, trying to help drivers earn more, faster. Not for optics. Not for PR. But because it was the right thing to do.

Yet externally, it looked like… nothing. None of it seemed to matter at the time. Perception was still sour. Drivers were skeptical. Trust is a fragile thing—especially when broken.

That’s when Dara Khosrowshahi, newly in the CEO chair, called an all-hands. His message was strikingly simple: “Keep doing the right things by the drivers. Step by step, they will add up.”

And they did. Slowly, quietly, without a viral campaign or a big bang. The 180 Days of Change initiative became a drumbeat of small improvements. One feature here. One policy there. Until, one day, Uber was the platform drivers preferred—not because of a marketing push, but because the product earned it.

In product and in leadership, we often confuse activity with progress. We forget that some outcomes take time. So it is important to decide what you have conviction behind and want to wait longer for results... That a team needs to trust before it performs. That product-market fit often hides behind detours and do-overs.

This is not a call to be lazy. The gardener still waters. Still prunes. Still wonders if maybe—just maybe—talking to plants does help. But they do not, under any circumstances, yell at the tree. :)

What patience looks like:

Trust the Process: Keep doing the right things even when results lag. The good stuff compounds. But like compound interest, it looks boring until it doesn’t. What matters is conviction in why you are doing the thing in the first place.

Embrace the Lull: Use slower periods to refine, learn, and prepare. Not every moment is harvest; sometimes it’s cultivation.

Celebrate Small Growth: The first sprout is as important as the eventual fruit.That tiny green thing? That’s your future. Recognize progress, however small.

In the end, patience is not idleness. It’s faith. In your team. Your vision. Your product. Yourself. Those who can pause—and persist—are the ones who end up building things that last.