The Surprising Lesson I learned From A 75-year-old

Yoda goes to the gym too

There are days when it feels like everyone else somehow received the map. They’re publishing faster, growing faster, selling more, building something impressive while you’re still staring at the same mile marker wondering whether you accidentally took the scenic route through Nebraska.

I know better than to compare my progress to somebody else’s. I also know better than to eat chips directly from the bag. Knowledge and behavior do not always enjoy a close relationship.

Writing full time has made this especially obvious. I love what I do, but it’s also my profession, which means the creative part comes with all the less-romantic questions attached. Am I doing enough? Am I spending my time on the right things? Should I be farther along by now? The internet is remarkably well equipped to answer that last question with a resounding YES, LOOK AT THIS PERSON.

There is always someone having a better launch, signing a bigger deal, writing more books, growing a larger audience, or casually announcing an accomplishment you didn’t realize you were supposed to be pursuing until five seconds ago. It can make perfectly reasonable progress feel suspiciously slow.

I was thinking about this recently at the gym, which is not where I generally expect to receive useful life advice. I spend most of my time there trying to negotiate an early release.

I hate exercise, and I’ve accepted that this is probably not going to change. What has changed is that I’m doing it regularly enough to notice the benefits. I’m stronger, my head is clearer afterward, and anxiety tends to burn off somewhere around the point when I stop resenting the treadmill for existing.

That day, an older gentleman was walking on the treadmill beside me. He moved slowly and stopped every few minutes for a short break. After a while, I noticed something odd: he had covered parts of the treadmill display with little Post-it notes. The time. The distance. Basically every number the machine thought he ought to care about.

Naturally, I became curious. Eventually I asked him about it.

He smiled and said, “It doesn’t matter how fast I go or how long it takes. All that matters is that I keep going.”

Apparently I had chosen the treadmill next to Yoda.

We talked for another minute, and he told me that he judged his pace by what felt right for him. I’m not sure whether he intended this as advice about anything beyond exercise, but I was already stealing it.

I looked back at my own display. Time elapsed, distance, pace, calories. Numbers everywhere, dutifully reporting how I was doing. So I stopped looking at them, put on my audiobook, and walked. Without watching every minute crawl past or checking how far I had gone, the time passed surprisingly quickly.

The whole thing stuck with me because we live surrounded by measurements now. Views, followers, rankings, reviews, sales, word counts, open rates, steps, streaks. Somebody somewhere has built a dashboard capable of telling you how you compare, and if they haven’t yet, I’m sure an app is in beta.

Some of those numbers are useful. I’m not suggesting we cover our analytics with office supplies and proceed entirely on vibes. I want goals. I want to know whether something I’m doing is working. I want people around me who are smarter or farther along and can tell me when I’m wandering into traffic.

But numbers are very good at telling us where we are and surprisingly bad at telling us whether our pace makes sense for our lives. Those aren’t the same question.

Someone else may have more time, more money, more experience, fewer responsibilities, different ambitions, better timing, or a completely different definition of success. Their pace can teach me something without becoming evidence that mine is wrong.

That distinction is harder to remember than it sounds.

I still catch myself looking sideways. I still have moments when somebody else’s accomplishment suddenly makes one of mine feel smaller, even though absolutely nothing about my accomplishment changed in the preceding thirty seconds. Brains are fun that way.

What I’m getting better at is noticing when comparison stops being useful information and starts becoming noise. Then I can ask the question that actually matters: Am I still moving toward something I want?

Sometimes the answer means I need to pick up the pace. Sometimes I need to change direction. Sometimes I’m doing just fine and should stop staring at somebody else’s treadmill.

The older I get, the more I suspect that a lot of progress is less dramatic than we want it to be. You show up, do the work, make adjustments, and keep going. Then one day you look back and realize the miles added up while you weren’t watching.

Turns out Post-its are surprisingly versatile.

Photo by Paper Textures on Unsplash