Shortly after my break on the farm, one of those lessons I do not know I was receiving through my grandmother (Maami).

I move straight to my little farmland which I earlier dropped some pepper seeds, the seeds I got from some of the local dishes we made back home.
While surveying my child Farm, I realised the plants are not yet sprouted and I was curious why that happens, and had to go back to Maami for answers.

Mammi, “ata ti mo gbin ko wu,” this means “Mammi, the pepper I planted did not grow/sprout.” She looked at me with pity and smile as she said, you have to wait, planting and growing take time.

While this statement may not mean so much to little Tunde, it makes sense to the one writing this article. The recent instant gratification craving has made me lose the sense of my grandma lesson, I have to remember this lesson yet again.

Shortly after social media became a thing, I was fascinated with the idea behind this medium and I was completely sold and HOOKED.

Times more than I can remember, I have had heated argument with my girlfriend and family because I did not reply their message immediately.

The idea of right now – instant gratification made me a poor child to this sets of people who are expecting me to reply their message right now.

As much as the right now is not a bad thing since the two-way communication has made it look like, I realised I started becoming a slave to them.

I have to explain why I was online and not replying messages, I have to apologize for taking my time to reply to people.

Giving that time is not the problem, well I would also argue it was because I had to sacrifice my sleep and productive endeavour to reply most times.

While in my father rented two rooms apartment in 2005, he was talking to me and I did not remember answering him because I do not feel like talking.

There are days I want to be silent, and in these days, he understands I needed this solitude and left me by myself, I do this all the time.

And most times, I do not get in his wrong side because he just knew I am not down for talking.

As much as this scenario with my father may make sense, it does not make a single one to my friends nor girl because communication these days is a loop.

She sent me a message, I replied and also replied to a friend and before I know what is happening, two more messages that demanded I reply to immediately pop in.

And this endless cycle continues. The unintended consequence of these two-way feedback loop is;

• We are not communicating, it is all noise since most times two people taking at a time means nothing of value is happening.
• We talk about everything and nothing
• We fall for the gamification of technology through their read receipts.
• We are program for instant gratification that whenever this gratification is not satisfied, things go bad.
• We started losing patience.

The problem with our mode of communication is like that of my little Tunde story who run to his grandma because he thinks the pepper is not growing.

And in all these, we started losing our sense of time and patience as we want everything to happen NOW. To some, they have been so used to this in that they were expecting the pepper to start growing immediately.

For the past few weeks, I have been struggling to get things that matter done, I was trying to build and it was difficult for me.

I realised I could no longer wait, patience started eluding me and I realised I was back with trying to ask her again about my pepper.

The only major problem is, I did not sow into anything meaningful asides the two-way feedback loop system I have found myself in.

A few days ago, after checking the new Apple application time report, I realised I spent 22 hours on Whatsapp. I asked myself what did I gained during those time and how have I done better than the previous week and to me, the answer is dead on arrival.

Then, I realised I have been growing my energy into an unproductive endeavour.

What if I used the 22hours to write a blog post, what if I used it to study my accessibility project more, what if I used it for product curation, and what if?

But then, I realised I did not grow and even when I was growing, I did not feel motivated to continue because I was not seeing instant result.

These are what I have bought upon myself and since I deleted WhatsApp, just as I deleted facebook 8 months ago, I started working on things that matter.

If I had not deleted Whatsapp, I would not have had time to write this post.

The question to ask yourself is, what are you doing with your time? Sowing a seed with delay gratification or still popping the juice of instant gratification?