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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Derek Olsen, I drink my coffee black, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share an interesting piece of wisdom that I over heard at a coffee shop.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
Just last week I was at my favorite coffee shop. I ordered my usual cup of black coffee and sat down at my favorite table to get some work done. At the table next to me there were two men enjoying coffee and chatting away. One of the guys was younger and one was a little older, perhaps a father son relationship, I don’t really know, but it was clear that the older one was a sort of mentor or teacher to the younger one.
I am an expert at working in noisy, busy environments, I can tune out everything going on around me. You could let the zoo loose inside the coffee shop and I wouldn’t even know it. And that is exactly what I did on this day, tuned the world out to focus on my work.
I can’t even tell you what the two men were talking about, I was so focused on my work. But out of nowhere I just happened to clearly hear one sentence that the older man said in response to something the younger man had said. It was such a simple thing, but it really caught my attention and I have been thinking about it ever since.
The older man said, “Yup, sometimes staying in the same place for a while is progress.”
That was the only thing I actually heard from the two men the entire time they were sitting next to me. It was kind of strange how clearly it came through to me.
Sometimes staying in the same place for a while is progress.
Can this be? I thought to myself.
Is he right? I even asked myself.
I have always thought of progress as moving forward or changing something.
It seems this way doesn’t it?
I even looked up the definition of the word progress and it means; forward or onward movement toward a destination.
Now how can this be, progress as staying in the same place for a while, as the man put it.
Progress is always characterized as moving forward.
In school we make progress by moving up a grade each year, graduating, and then maybe going off to college or even grad school. Staying in the same grade would be considered a failure.
At work we make progress by getting assigned new work, being promoted, or at least getting a pay raise. Staying in the same place at work might not be a failure, but would we call it progress?
It took me a while to think of any example of staying in the same place being the same as progress. But once I thought of a few, this idea started to make sense.
A marriage needs to stay put for a while in order for it to be considered a success.
An investment needs to stay in the same place for a while in order to get a return on your money.
A musician needs to practice the same piece of music over and over in order to be able to perform it well.
One more, how about a school teacher who teaches the same lesson several times and day for several years. That is certainly to be considered progress.
An example in my life has to do with my business. It takes a while for any business to get traction and gain momentum. I have been doing the same thing over and over for a while now and it is because of it that success has shown up.
I suppose advice like this, as it goes for most advice, is situational. There are plenty of situations in life in which staying in the same place for a while would not be considered progress.
Will Rogers is quoted as saying that even if you are on the right track you will get run over if you just stand there. You would have to be sily to just stand there waiting to get run over, even if you are on the right track. But staying in the same place, or moving forward are both needed at different times in order to make progress.
So here’s what I learned…
I learned that, well, just like the old man said, “Sometimes staying in the same place for a while is progress.”
I learned that sometimes I just need to slow down, stick around, and do the same thing over and over again in order to make progress.
I’m Derek Olsen and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
Follow my wife and I as we have better conversations on money and marriage.
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