To quote musician Tom Petty, “The waiting is the hardest part.” And it’s getting harder. We live in a world of same-day delivery, microwaveable meals, and on-demand entertainment. Patience is a virtue and often in short supply.

“Humans like instant gratification,” says Courtney E. Ackerman, author of The Book of Patience. “We are wired to seek out pleasurable experiences, not in the future, but now right now. If you’ve ever had an event coming up that you are really looking forward to, you know how hard it can be to wait patiently.”

Adding to impatience is the uncertain world in which we live. Over the past 18 months we learned that all we really have is the present moment, so we want it to be as pleasant as possible, says Ackerman. “When something comes up that puts more time or distance between us and our goal, we often react with irritation and a sense of urgency,” she says.

In addition to needing patience for life in general, being more patient can help in your career, says Dorie Clark, Fast Company contributor and author of The Long Game: How to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world.

If you’re planning on watching the show, proceed with caution—there are spoilers ahead. 

Good buzz about the show, starring Jason Sudeikis as an American football coach in London, resulted in the streaming service’s biggest premiere viewership to date, and a six-fold audience increase, according to a report in Variety. While the streaming service isn’t releasing hard audience data, it’s clear that the series is gaining traction. The show also racked up 20 Emmy nominations, including four in the Best Supporting Actor category.

Ask fans why they (we) love the show, and you’ll hear a familiar refrain: It’s a bright spot in a painful world. The writing is sharp and manages to be optimistic, wise, and hilarious without being cloying. Each of the characters has flaws and weaknesses that keep them from becoming caricatures. In a recent episode that paid homage to romantic comedies (funnier and cleverer than it sounds), the Lasso declared, “I believe in ‘rom-communism’”—the philosophy that everything will work out in the end, even if it’s not the way you think it would. These days, that can be hard to believe. Therein lies some of the show’s appeal.

And if you’re looking for examples of how leaders behave—or should—Ted Lasso is fertile ground. Here are five times Lasso and his cohorts reminded us of the way leaders should act:

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Here we are, entering the 18th month of a pandemic that has brought constant upheaval to virtually every aspect of our lives. We’re adjusting to increased risks from a more potent variant, the omnipresent strain of a new set of restrictions, and the slow pace of vaccinations. The hope that things will return to normal has, somewhere along the way, been quietly replaced with the hope that we’ll find a new normal.

For those of us who spent most of our pre-COVID-19 hours in endless pursuit of ways to further optimize our daily hustle on behalf of technology startups, things have changed. We’ve changed. We’re not the same people we were in February 2020. We’ve each weathered the past year and a half in different ways, but many of us have come to the exact same conclusion: The old way of working won’t work anymore.

When I started TaskRabbit on the heels of the Great Recession, I quickly learned that many workers were ready to swap out their 9-to-5 jobs for a more agile, independent working life. We learned that control and flexibility were the primary drivers of people searching for a new way to work. Post-pandemic tech workers want that same control and flexibility, yes, but they’re also unapologetically in pursuit of purpose and passion.

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