Learn to sit in a waiting room without your phone. That’s where patience gets built.

Boredom used to have nowhere to go, so you sat in it, and things happened in there: ideas, plans, actually noticing the room. Now every gap gets filled within a second, and the muscle that handles waiting stops getting used. Then real waiting arrives, the kind you cannot skip, and a few slow minutes feel unbearable.

Pick one short wait this week and leave the phone in your pocket: the bus, the line, the dentist. Look around, count something, let it be slow. It feels strange for about ninety seconds, then it settles, and you stand up less wound up than usual.