Perseverance, the ability to keep going despite hardships, is a very important skill to learn, and something I recently had a chance to practice.  On Friday I took what should have been a 4 hour exam… which lasted 5.5+ hours.  Instead of starting this (stressful) exam that I’d spent 8 months preparing for immediately, I was greeted with a black screen and a spinning beach ball.  Despite figuring out how to get help, I ended up waiting on hold for tech support.  For 2.5 hours.  Talking to chat bots. In circles.  At several points I considered just calling it and rescheduling (something that would set me back another two months).  

Instead, I took a moment to breathe and figure out my options… Everything basically amounted to waiting on hold for chat support… or phone support… or chat support again… and again and again.  I figured if I could just get the RIGHT agent on the phone, I’d get in and could take my exam.  It just took my not giving up.  Eventually, 2 hours later I found that agent, and my exam started.  8 questions in it immediately broke.  Again.  This was another chance to give up.  I’d already spent half my allotted time not answering questions, and who knows how much longer it would go on for.  Instead I chose the perseverance route; apply my previous strategy of reaching out again. And again. And again.

This was not as easy as it sounds. Whatever chat system I was tied into would automatically send me a message “from the agent” every 3 minutes. It was something like “Thanks for your patience, I’m still looking into your issue”, that just repeated. After 40 minutes of non-responses I began asking if anyone was actually there, and they could type in literally ANYTHING other than the stock message to let me know. Eventually I hung up on that chat and opened another, and kept doing that until I found someone who could help me. The same thing happened to me on the phone; after 30+ minutes on hold an agent would pickup, tell me they’d fixed the issue, then hang up. I even asked one to stay on the line until I could confirm the issue was resolved, but they said they couldn’t.

Long story short I ended up passing that exam…. But not after getting a hands-on lesson in perseverance.  In this case it expressed itself in not giving up, in not saying “I give” and quitting, in continuing to look for an answer despite every avenue being non-helpful.  This is hard stuff… it would be SO much easier to just reschedule or do it later, but it wasn’t worth it to me.  Not only would I have to go through all the anxiety of prep AGAIN, all the waiting AGAIN, I’d have wasted almost 3 hours of my life on hold.

Situations like this crop up all the time.  We’re in meetings that we’re bored stupid in.  We have to work on projects that just… never… die.  Something fails and we lose several hours of work that we have to re do.  The challenge is not to get stuck on how annoying/stupid/etc the situation is, but instead of focus on what’s important; being present, completing our work, solving the challenge.