Without question, technology has fundamentally transformed the world we live in. What used to take decades to accomplish can now be done almost overnight. It's hard to believe for some, but there was actually a point where you had to wait weeks or maybe even months to receive a reply to your letter. Now we have instant access to anyone in the world with the click of a button. This is what we've come to expect, but as technology has evolved our minds haven't fully adapted.

Despite the progress in biohacking, most of us still have virtually the same body people had centuries ago. Until we've reached cyborg status with insane bandwidths of data transfer, we're stuck with our computer mice, keyboards, and touch screens. Presently technology merely augments our lives and isn't quite fully intertwined with our beings. Therefore, we must evaluate how technology has impacted our lives to better understand where we need to focus our efforts.

Despite all the good technology has done for us, we must be cognizant of how it can rob us of patience. Because we have everything at our fingertips, we're unlearning what it means to be patient. It takes time to develop skills. It takes time to build a company. It takes time to make a life for yourself. But because we want it now, we're not willing to wait. In my mind one of the largest consequences of this lack of delayed gratification is a distorted view of success.

Tony Robbins put it well when he said, "The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you." This is exactly what we're unlearning in our now centered culture.

When breaking down success into pleasure and pain, I think of it like investing. We can cash out on our pleasures today or invest them to yield even greater returns in the future. Often the process of such investments is associated with pain and difficulty. When we seek to shortcut this process, we're uprooting the seeds of patience in our life. We spend all our time looking for the immediate rewards - consequently there are none to reap in the future.

Because of technology, we've come to expect exponential gains for minimal investments. But that's not the way the natural world works. If you forged a diploma or certificate of achievement, it ultimately would render useless once you can't back up the claim with the skills. We might not realize it, but this is what we're doing when we try to bypass hard work. Only when you stop doing things for the reward and find a reward in the process do you understand the true value of growth.

Unlike a promising tech company, we can't grow exponentially overnight. Things like learning follow the natural course of life that takes time and patience to mature. Next time you're trying to find some life hack or way to shortcut the trials and tribulations of life, consider that if you skip the hardships you're avoiding the lessons that accompany those experiences. Until we can download these lessons into our brain, we're all better off embracing the process of learning and growth with patience.