A bunch of things can help.

Reduce the shit that amps you up all the time or makes you irritable. Coffee. Sugar. Nicotine/drugs. Lack of exercise. Lack of personal time or focus or meditation or whatever. Deal with the stressors outside of the person. Because that's stuff you'll want to take out on others and dislike them for little things that ultimately don't matter. Because really, so what if someone talks slow or is slow. You get your shit done, you don't have to live in comparisons, and that slow talker isn't taking away some precious seconds that you're losing doing other things. Those seconds in that context are almost never that essential.

The other part is just taking a moment to stop making things about how you feel or how you feel wronged or afflicted or that it's an affront to you. They're allowed to have their stories and their existence and they're not to be controlled to fit your speed of things. Sometimes you want to just consume shit fast because your brain moves fast or whatever. But people aren't TikTok. They're people. You can't just swipe them away. I mean, you can. But what a lonely and unappreciative life. Computers work fast. People comparatively never will. And imagine people rushing you when you're sharing things that are meaningful. "Eugene, I'm happy to be marrying you today. From the moment I first laid eyes on you on our first date in..." "Ugh, get to the point. Come on, pick it up." Yeah, that's a quick way to get people to shut down and never want to share with you.

Another part is having some patience and grace and understanding for the things that make other people different from you. Some people learn slower, process slower, get confused. You just don't know their stories. Maybe they lack some self awareness. You don't know the context of people. You might feel powerful being like, "I talk fast and they don't. Ugh, these slow people just can't keep up with me." Well here's some stuff to make you feel like shit. What if they're neurodivergent or mentally handicapped or had a stroke or a developmental disability or are dealing with grief and trauma at home and are overwhelmed easily. Now you feel like a complete piece of shit for thinking these things, right? Think about how that would look to others. Now know that that doesn't matter. That's all the ego being fed and the ego will never be satisfied if that's all you feed. But what's important to understand is that you don't know people.

What if you think you're so awesome compared to them because they can't keep up with you. And it turns out they're musical geniuses or a great parent or an exceptional athlete or volunteer with those in need. It's just their mental resources for this one thing you don't like are being expended elsewhere in something that makes them brilliant.

Sometimes it's that you're only focusing on a small part of people's humanity. They exist in a totality. And that's why it's important to have a patience for a lot of people. Because there's more to people than just what you see that frustrates you or not, and you can start to develop an appreciation for people and what they bring to the world as a whole rather than just seeing them as a function to your story or to fixate on the small parts.

Also, it's okay to feel how you feel. If you're irritated, you're irritated. What's not cool is being a dick about it. But it's okay to feel these things. You can reflect on why. You can even choose how to let things hit you. Maybe you make a choice to be amused and to reframe it that way. Maybe it's a fun game when you hear the story point repeated twice. Maybe it's something that's endearing that they're slow or deliberate. Maybe you just accept that some people do things slow and others quick.

I'll say this of workplace optics. I used to track my employees productivity every day. And the people I saw at their desks the least were the ones who did the most work. The one guy who looked like a snail was just so consistent and focused that he burned through his work more than everyone else. So yeah, it doesn't matter what I saw. If I went off that, I know it'd be my ego projecting rather than hearing people for who they are.

Anyway, hit some mindfulness, hit some meditation. Practice grace and empathy and patience. Shit's not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things and I say that not to diminish or dismiss, but to encourage you to see that as a freedom to let things go that don't matter and not to sweat the stuff that's small