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Today, 3M sells Post-It Notes in over 100 countries worldwide. You can find
them at libraries and schools, in offices and boardrooms, and scattered around
nearly every workspace in between.
What can we learn from the story of Art Fry? And is there something we can
take away from this to make our lives and the world better?
Create Something Small
Art Fry wasn’t trying to create a best-selling office supply product. In the
beginning, Fry was simply trying to design a better bookmark for his choir
hymnal. He was just trying to create something small.
For a long time, I thought that if I wasn’t working on something incredible,
then it wasn’t of much value. But gradually I discovered the truth: the most
important thing isn’t to create something world-changing, but simply to create.
You don’t have to build something famous to build something meaningful.
And this brings us to the most important lesson we can learn from Art Fry and
his Post-It Notes: when the world presents you with something interesting or
frustrating or curious, choose to do something about it. Choose to be a creator.
In other words, the world needs smart people to build things. We need
employees who invent things, entrepreneurs who create things, and freelancers
who design things. We need secretaries who make jewelry as a side project and
stay-at-home dads who write amazing novels. We need more leaders, not more
followers. We need more creators, not more consumers.
And perhaps the most important thing to realize is that we not only need to