First to the Board

Waiting rarely reduces fear. Usually it gives it time to prepare a presentation.

When several people have to do the same unpleasant thing — speak, answer, sit an interview, take a practical test — going early often works out better. Less time goes on anxious waiting, fewer of other people’s mistakes have time to settle in your head, and the examiner has not yet run out of patience.

This is not a universal law. In an exam it helps to consider your own readiness, the format and the chance to see what kind of questions come up. In negotiations it is sometimes wiser to hear the others out. There are situations where the queue really does carry useful information.

Still, the habit of always hiding at the end has a cumulative effect. A person is not only avoiding one unpleasant moment, he is also practising avoiding the next ones.

So from time to time it helps to take a visible place voluntarily:

• ask the first question;
• show a draft first;
• be the first to try a new tool;
• be the first to admit the instructions are unclear;
• be the first to the board, if the cost of a mistake is low.

Courage rarely appears before the action. Usually it arrives later and claims it was there all along.

Dentistry gives the cleanest experience. An eight in the morning appointment and a six in the evening appointment differ not in the treatment but in the twelve hours during which the person carries the coming drilling around with him. The dentist’s work is the same in both cases. What differs is how long the procedure lasts inside the patient’s head, and it is that which later gets described with the word “awful.” Any postponed conversation issues the same bill: reporting a mistake on Monday or on Friday is the same work and a different week.

Waiting is not free, though it takes up nothing in the calendar. It is charged to a different account — to the attention that will no longer stretch to everything else that day.