Being a QA how important it is to be Patient?

It is said  that 'Patience is the key to success' and success or happiness in life can be guaranteed in life if you learn to be patient. In today' fast running world it is very difficult to keep cool and we mostly tend to loose it become agitated, angry very soon. I am in the QA field for the past 6.5 to 7 years and kept thinking about the role that 'patience' plays being a QA.

We all know that QA is a field which completely relies on your thinking power, your ability to judge, analysis, think out of the box and hence if the mind is agitated it becomes difficult to think which directly affects our work. So what could be the reasons which make agitated ? They can be:

1. Disturbance at home - had a heated argument while leaving to office with parents or spouse or someone else.
2. Trying to put up your point - you are trying to put up your point in the team which you think is very important and either no one is ready to listen to you or they feel it is irrelevant.
3. Work Pressure - release is coming round the corner and development is pending / testing is pending.
4. Boss - got a bad report from boss about you
5. Client reported bug - even after you put al your efforts, still client found a bug.

The reasons could by any, hundreds, thousands and everyday a new reason but loosing cool, getting into argument will never help. Rather we should try to keep our cool, when you feel agitated tell yourself in your mind 'Stay Cool, this will pass'. Things that we can try to avoid are like never take personal life to office; keep both separate; if you are not heard wait till other finish and then put up your point; try to keep a soft tone. When you feel angry it is always better to stay quite and not talk to anyone, try to calm down and think, you will get the answer. I know this is very hard to do but if we try this can be achieved.

At home try to activities that relax you, give you relief like: cooking , listening to soft music, exercising, going for a walk. Talking about my personal experience to relax myself I take out my sketch book and that gives me a lot of peace and I am still working on this. No one is perfect but we need to work upon and improve our self for our betterment.