"I haven't got a lot of patience"
About this Quote
Impatience is a funny thing to confess when your job is manufacturing patience for millions of strangers. Jeffrey Katzenberg’s “I haven’t got a lot of patience” reads less like a personal quirk than a production philosophy: speed as virtue, friction as enemy, decision-making as a contact sport. Coming from a producer - a role built around shepherding chaos into a coherent product - the line signals an intolerance for drift. It’s a warning shot and a promise: meetings will be short, notes will be blunt, and indecision will be treated as a solvable problem.
The intent is managerial as much as psychological. Katzenberg spent his career inside systems where time is literally monetized: studio release calendars, marketing windows, talent schedules, investor expectations. In that world, patience isn’t a moral quality; it’s overhead. The subtext is that creativity is welcome only if it ships. You can hear the implied corollary: bring solutions, not vibes.
It also functions as brand-building. Hollywood power players trade in temperament the way directors trade in lenses. Declaring impatience is a way to claim sharpness, to suggest a mind moving faster than the room. That posture can inspire teams to cut through bureaucracy, but it can also flatten nuance, rewarding the loudest “yes” over the slow, correct “wait.”
Context matters: Katzenberg’s legacy spans big-studio discipline and tech-era disruption (DreamWorks, then Quibi). The quote fits both. It’s the credo of someone addicted to momentum - and occasionally burned by mistaking motion for direction.
The intent is managerial as much as psychological. Katzenberg spent his career inside systems where time is literally monetized: studio release calendars, marketing windows, talent schedules, investor expectations. In that world, patience isn’t a moral quality; it’s overhead. The subtext is that creativity is welcome only if it ships. You can hear the implied corollary: bring solutions, not vibes.
It also functions as brand-building. Hollywood power players trade in temperament the way directors trade in lenses. Declaring impatience is a way to claim sharpness, to suggest a mind moving faster than the room. That posture can inspire teams to cut through bureaucracy, but it can also flatten nuance, rewarding the loudest “yes” over the slow, correct “wait.”
Context matters: Katzenberg’s legacy spans big-studio discipline and tech-era disruption (DreamWorks, then Quibi). The quote fits both. It’s the credo of someone addicted to momentum - and occasionally burned by mistaking motion for direction.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Discipline |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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