the unlikely history of the post-it note post-it notes ERV rare today they're ubiquitous in every office there's post-it notes at your office your friends office everywhere you go we see post-it notes and it's a product that's you know so commonplace that you almost want to think that it always existed but actually didn't someone had to actually invent the post-it note and believe it or not the story behind the invention of the post-it note it's actually an incredible story it's very inspirational and there's also a lot we can learn from this fascinating story now the post-it note was invented by company called 3m and today we know 3m has a great office supply giant they make all kinds of things they make post-it notes they make pretty much anything that you could use for office supplies but you know you have to ask yourself do you really know what 3m stands for it actually stands for Minnesota mining and manufacturing now you say what does Minnesota mining and manufacturing have to do with office supplies well nothing really but what it shows about the company 3m is that you know they're not a company that's just set in their ways they used to do mining and manufacturing stuff and at some point they transitioned into making office supplies now the story behind the invention of the post-it note starts in 1968 when dr. Spencer silver who is a scientist at 3m was trying to make a super strong adhesive he was working on a specific adhesive that he was trying to invent and through sheer accident he actually ended up making an adhesive that was actually very weak and he kind of did the opposite of what he was trying to accomplish and he took this weak adhesive that he invented and he didn't particularly have a use for it but he could tell that he was onto something and he tried to get a lot of people at 3m to find a use for it and after many many years of promoting this product and a use for it was not really found nobody really found a way that they could use it for any of the projects they were doing that is until 1974 when another employee at 3m named art fry and art fry he had heard of this adhesive that dr. Salford made and he came up with an idea one day to use it as a bookmark I guess he was song in his church choir and his bookmark would always fall out of his book marking what song they were gonna sing and he thought to himself what if I used this very weak adhesive and put it on a bookmark and that way the bookmark would be able to stay in the exact page I put it in and not move but at the same time the adhesive was weak enough that it wasn't gonna damage the page or rip the paper or leave a permanent mark and so that's the idea that they ran with and that idea you know didn't really catch on that much but through trial and error they eventually came to the idea of using it as the way we know today now as opposed to note basically a note that you can stick somewhere stick on the fridge stick on a book stick on your desk stick on your computer screen wherever and write a little note on that little piece of paper stick it to the place you want to put it and then when you take it off when you're done with that note it doesn't leave a mark it doesn't damage the surface that it was on today 3m is a company worth billions of dollars in 2019 alone they had over 32 billion dollars in sales and an estimated 1 billion of that sales came from sales of the post-it note so the post-it note is one of the top selling off supply products in the world and yet it's amazing how it all started by accident it all started when dr. Spencer silver actually created the product on accident when he was actually trying to create a super strong adhesive and he accidentally made a super weak adhesive so a pretty incredible story what can we learn from this story though how can we then apply that to our lives you see one thing that we can learn from this is that as long as you just do something something good can come from it in the future even if in the immediate it doesn't see like anything good came dr. silver tried to create a super strong adhesive and failed he accidentally crazy super weak adhesive and for years and years and years there was no use for this adhesive he even pitched it to other people in the company and they never had a use for it until our Frank came along so that's one thing that we can learn as it as long as you're just doing something even if you mess up even if you try to create an invention and you end up creating the opposite you try to start a project and you fail and you mess up and you know what you try to create doesn't turn out the way you wanted to do it doesn't matter because something good can't eventually come from it you know the Bible says in all labor there is profit as long as you're putting in labor as long as you're putting in work as long as you're trying and trying to create things and build things eventually some sort of profitable thing will come from the labor that you put into it you want to do something important with your life you want your life to have meaning you want to accomplish something with your life at least start doing something now don't just sit there waiting for the perfect opportunity to come to you don't sit there waiting for the perfect idea of the perfect invention to just hit you in the face no no start doing something now and even if what you're doing is a big flop and a big failure and it's completely useless and you don't see a reason for it and you can't find a purpose for it keep trying and eventually even the things you fail at could one day become a great billion-dollar product just like the post-it note [Music]