Last week, I went to pick up a custom print order for a couple of friends who were short on time. Erick, a friendly, talkative, and patient Central American, helped me. When he handed me the job, he also gave me the bill: $32.74. I asked him for a couple of minutes to send him the transfer via Zelle (which is basically the gringo Nequi) and done: "Transfer Successful." I showed Erick the screen of my cell phone just as his pinged, notifying him of the same transaction in his favor.
Probably because in Colombia we don't really deal with cents, I'm not in the habit of paying attention to them; I always round up. It saves me the math, counting change, and time. Erick looks surprised as he tells me, "You sent me $33." I was about to tell him that yes, it was the same thing, but he was faster and continued: "Do you want the change in cash?" I told him of course not, that it was nothing. Erick gave me an odd look and began to tell me that at his house, where he lives with his wife and kids, they have a habit of putting a quarter in a jar every time they use the washing machine, and that recently the machine broke down. When they checked it, they realized the repair was too expensive to be worth it. They opened the jar, counted the coins, and they only had to put in $20 to buy a brand new washer. Nobody felt the purchase, nobody complained about the breakdown, nobody had to take a large sum out of their pocket, and it didn't mess up anyone's budget for the month.
That is the power of the apparently insignificant, of the small but continuous, of consistency and the invisible. That's how everything in life works: Through accumulation. In the beginning, progress is so imperceptible that this is the stage where most people abandon what they're doing because it seems useless—in the study of habits, it's known as the PLATEAU OF LATENT POTENTIAL. Meaning, there's a possibility something will happen, but really "nothing has happened" yet, and therefore, at that point, most people say, "Forget this, it's pointless."
Only those people who continue despite not seeing any results are the ones who reap the rewards in the end. They are the ones who don't abandon the path, they are the ones who don't depend on motivation to do things, they are the ones who, once clear on the path, don't overthink the reasons to keep going or not. They are the ones who simply do a little each day, they are the ones who don't get distracted, they are the ones who are convinced that this is what they have to and want to do, they are the ones who are aware that it all adds up.
Erick's story reminded me of the metaphor from Jacob Riis, the Danish-American journalist and social leader: "When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before."
Sometimes, the most important financial lessons don't come from an economics book, but from a print shop worker. Erick, with the simplicity of his coin jar, reminded me that life isn't built on big strokes of luck or one single, decisive action, but on the quiet discipline of valuing the small things. Wisdom doesn't always shout; sometimes it barely makes a sound, like a quarter falling into a glass jar.
Keep at it, reader. I assure you, you are making progress.
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Fun fact: If you read 5 pages of a book a day, over the course of a year you will have read 1,825 pages—that is, about 6 books. In other words: By reading 5 pages a day, you'll already be reading more than 75% of Colombians and 65% of the world's inhabitants.
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This article was written for issue 186 of El Faro newspaper, and you can read the original Spanish version here.