get busy with the present

If the daily grind is wearing you down and you worry you’ve been in the same job too long, spare a thought for 100-year-old Walter Orthmann, who’s been at the same company a record-breaking 84 years. 

Guinness World Records Ltd. announced that the Brazilian sales manager holds the official record for the “longest career in the same company” after verifying in January that he’d been with the same textile firm for more than eight decades.

The centenarian began working as a shipping assistant at Industrias Renaux SA, now named RenauxView, a year before the outbreak of World War Two, when he was just 15 years old. He was quickly promoted to a position in sales, an area where he remains to this day. 

For a little context, the median number of years that U.S. workers had been with their current employer in 2020 stood at 4.1, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

So what’s the secret of Orthmann’s exceptional career? 

“I don’t do much planning, nor care much about tomorrow. All I care about is that tomorrow will be another day in which I will wake up, get up, exercise and go to work,” Guinness quoted him as saying. 

“You need to get busy with the present, not the past or the future.”

De Wei Dexter Low

"This Manager Sets Record by Working for Same Company for 84 Years," Bloomberg. May 4, 2022

prepare my mind for life itself

The sole reason I work out like I do isn't to prepare for and win ultra races. I don't have an athletic motive at all. It's to prepare my mind for life itself. Life will always be the most grueling endurance sport, and when you train hard, get uncomfortable, and callous your mind, you will become a more versatile competitor, trained to find a way forward no matter what. Because there will be times when life comes at you like a sledgehammer. Sometimes life hits you dead in the heart.

David Goggins

Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds - Clean Edition. Lioncrest. 2020. p.256

habitual exercise

When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It’s not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. “Exercise spills over,” said James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. “There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.”

Charles Duhigg

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House. 2012.