December 20, 2025
Whether we’re talking about programming or writing, you need frustration tolerance: the ability to withstand the annoyance of figuring out a solution.
In the past, people had to deal with this frustration all the time. They would not know the answer to something, and so they would spend hours, days, sometimes even years searching for it. Everyone had legendary frustration tolerance.
If you fast-forward to this precise moment in time, however, people have almost no frustration tolerance. Everything has to be instantaneous, and if it isn’t, it’s a disaster.
People will immediately run to Google or to ChatGPT and ask for the answer. While in some instances this is the reasonable thing to do, if you’re trying to learn or to improve your abilities, this is a terrible idea.
Learn to accept this feeling of frustration, and see it for what it is—an opportunity.