What’s the rush? It’s true, we live in a world where Blinkit will deliver the PlayStation 5 in 15 minutes. It takes mere seconds for a restaurant to accept your poke-bowl order on Zomato. Even rejections are swift on LinkedIn.

You may have learnt from your last Tinder hook-up that speed isn’t everything. Some things take time. Some things can’t be hacked or sped up via an app. But some of those things are worth the effort and the patience. So give the time-trials a rest. Focus on slow, lasting change in these key areas:

Skincare: Give it 28 days

Brands have found a way to bottle everything except unicorn blood (though they’re still searching). There are overnight masks, seven-day treatments, creams that claim to deliver a visible difference by next Tuesday. And yet, the biological processes that govern how skin behaves remain largely unchanged. For acne-prone skins to see the full effects of even a wonder ingredient such as salicylic acid, it requires 28 days of twice-daily use. This is how long it takes for skin-cells to renew themselves and for the acid to reach every layer of the skin.

It’s a simple rule of thumb, says Sita Paudal, category head for skin aesthetics and nail at VLCC’s South Asia Skill Development Business. “Give a product a full-bottle’s worth of a try,” she says. “If there’s no difference by then, move on. Ingredients such as retinoids work by increasing cell turnover, which can lead to smoother, clearer skin over time, but may cause irritation or purging when you first use them.” Skins that are kept moisturised over several weeks end up showing less discolouration, are less prone to greyish dullness. And should you skip a day of application, it’s not a huge loss.

For anti-ageing, being consistent matters more than buying something expensive or high-strength and using it only when you remember, says Dr Janaki K Yalamanchilli, dermatologist at Cloudnine Hospital, Hyderabad. Ageing is a complex biological process; it involves multiple factors such as loss of fat and hormonal fluctuations. “One-time-use serums and masks can’t fight them. A slow customised regime and all-round good health does.”

Fitness: Stick it out for three months

For those planning a beach-ready summer 2024 body, or hoping to lose kilos for a June wedding, it’s not going to happen. The body isn’t a machine. It’s geared to hoard and optimise fuel. A spurt of increased physical activity won’t make fat burn off immediately. Instead it gets the body ready for a store-and-burn processes. “These adaptations occur at a cellular level and may not be immediately apparent on the surface,” says bodybuilder Chitharesh Kongarampilly Natesanm aka The Indian Monster.

Most new or returning gymmers give up (or worse, switch to fad diets and supplements) because they don’t see promising results after the first overzealous month. It’s foolish, says Natesan. “That ‘No Pain, No Gain’ motto often leads to unrealistic expectations and disappointment,” he says.

Strength training and muscle-building routines show results only a few weeks or months into consistent activity, says fitness expert Gunjan Taneja. Strength gains may take months or even years. Flexibility and mobility programmes, including stretching and yoga, deliver their transformations incrementally, only three weeks in. Sustainable weightloss is slow – only a few kilos a month – and takes a year before the body settles into the lighter, healthier behaviours.

A good way to keep at it is to build a regime that suits your interests. If you’re easily bored, put a variety of workouts on shuffle mode. If you’d rather not sweat, pick a low-impact activity and workout for longer. “Set realistic expectations, prioritise consistency over perfection, celebrate non-scale victories (maybe just showing up every day for a week), be kind to yourself, set a long-term goal and aim to enjoy the process,” says Taneja.

Upskilling: Adult lessons take months and years

Kids pick up a new language just from TV or someone speaking it around them. Schoolkids focus less on mistakes and learn to play a sport or musical instrument faster than grown-ups. Revision and observation are part of student life. Adults find it harder to shed the impatience, frustration and inevitable competitiveness.

“Children have a more open-minded approach to learning,” says Krithika Sreenivasan, creative classical musician, writer and a special projects executive at the Indian Music Experience Museum, Bengaluru. “Adults typically possess some knowledge, often sourced from the internet, which can sometimes impede the learning process. Learning anything, even an instrument, demands patience. For adults, this can sometimes feel like a chore, lacking the full enjoyment experienced by children.”

And grown-ups overthink every move, setting them back further. It’s why Duolingo encourages you to celebrate small wins, and why even casual video games have daily and weekly rankings. Language courses, even intensive three-month ones, stress practice and practical use. So regardless of the certificate you earn, the longer and more often you’ve spoken a language, the more fluent you’ll be.

Read Also: job hunting? tips for how to stand out without sticking out