Need to work on my patience!!

I'm oftentimes impatient and its shown itself in many ways throughout my life. I was one of those kids who didn't read the directions. That cost me quite a few points over the years. Probably made the difference between so many Bs that could've been A's. More recently I remember quite a few incidents where I would respond to my friend Mike's emails without reading them all the way through to his great frustration. So often the answer to my question could be found in his last sentence that I failed to read. Its difficult for me to focus sometimes because I quickly tire of tasks set before me. Basically, following-through to the end of something has always been painful to me. I like to start things, but let someone else take care of the details. The most recent example of this lack of patience - I failed to carefully read my friend's flight itinerary. I wrote down about 4 or 5 weeks ago that she was arriving on the 2nd. I bought bus tickets for Mendoza for the evening of the 2nd, made hotel reservations for the evening of the third. Spent this morning wondering why she wasn't on her flight. Then realized that she wasn't getting in on the 2nd - she was FLYING on the 2nd - a red eye arriving the morning of the 3rd. Had I carefully read the itinerary she had sent me none of this would be happening. Of course I didn't, I was hasty - saw March 2 and looked down to the arrival time and saw 9:14 AM and kept going. Hell, the girl even wrote me an email saying she had 11 hours until her flight but I didn't even register it.

So of course now I feel like a fool and I've contemplated my general hastiness, lack of patience, ADD, hyperactivity, airheadedness, what have you...I took one of those personality tests and it concurs with my own analysis. I cant stay on a long and steady road. After changing topics a million times during the course of a conversation a friend of mine told me to stop it - understandably. I tried to explain that while some people's brains can behave like they are watching a movie mine seems to act like its watching a fireworks display. "Look over there, Oh! over there! Oh my God - look there now!". Its not at a clinical level ;) but its definitely something to work on. Ask my nearest and dearest how many times they've wanted to kill me for this part of my personality.

Take the test and tell me what you are - its pretty cool.
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

I'm an ENTP
http://www.typelogic.com/entp.html

How hilarious is this picture?


Here are some quotes on patience...
These are the fun/interesting ones, then below are the serious ones...

Patience is the key to paradise. (Karen's comment - yeah, If you wait long enough you die ;)
Turkish proverb
“Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you, but not in one ahead.”
Bill McGlashen quotes
“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow-that is patience.”
Patience is a virtue, Possess it if you can, Seldom found in woman, Never found in man”
“Never run after a bus or a man. There will always be another one.”
"The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it."--
Arnold H. Glasgow
“Patience is good only when it is the shortest way to a good end; otherwise, impatience is better”
"Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice."--
George Jackson
"I am extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end."
"I think and think for months and years, ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right."--
Albert Einstein
--Margaret Thatcher

The serious ones....
"Patience and perserverence have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish."--
John Quincy Adams
"Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures." --
Joseph Addison
"Patience is a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue."--
Ambrose Bierce
"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."--
Thomas A. Edison
"He that can have patience can have what he will."--
Benjamin Franklin
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
Chinese Proverb
All things come to him who waits - provided he knows what he is waiting for.
Johann Friedrich von Schiller
Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew.
Saint Francis De Sales