The Harvard Patience Experiment

Patience is the most boring virtue, Oliver Burkeman asserted. Yet, patience has never been more important. In a world defined by speed, patience can be a powerful tool. Patience can also be difficult to practice. One notable example of practicing patience is illustrated in Jennifer Roberts’ experiment.

In her art history courses at Harvard, Jennifer Roberts asked every student to spend THREE hours looking at any work of art of their choosing before writing about it. THREE full hours. No email. No social media. The timespan seems excessive, but that is the intentional design behind the experiment. The goal of the experiment is to give students the permission and structures to decelerate in a world that is powered by immediacy, rapidity, and spontaneity.

Some takeaways:

• True learning takes patience
• Patience is a skill that can be learned
• Patience is not a weakness. Patience is power. It is temporal intelligence.

This experiment is also covered in the Four Thousand Weeks book by Oliver Burkeman.