I Visited London for a Day. All I Saw was the Underground.
When you’re doing something unfamiliar, it’s great to have a guide. But it’s always good to make sure that the guide knows what they’re doing.
When I was in high school, I played sax, and was pretty good, if I say so myself. One summer I was part of a performing group that toured Europe, giving concerts. Our first stop was in London.
Part of what made the tour great was that we had opportunities to see the local sights. And, we had nearly a whole day free in London.
I spent that day with three other people. I was getting to know Sarah. And, Sarah and I were friends with Gina and Bill. We learned that twofer tickets at matinee performances of musicals in London were a great bargain.
So the four of us got tickets to a 4:00 pm performance of West Side Story at Her Magesty’s Theatre on Haymarket Street.
Note that 4:00 performance time. It becomes important.
Tickets in hand, we ate lunch at a little Swiss restaurant.
Bill and Gina spread a map across our lunch to plot our course for the day. The rest of our tour would be on the continent, and they wanted to get a feel for navigating a map while we were still in an English-speaking country. Their idea was to get close to the theater and then we could see the sights that were nearby until it got close to curtain time.
Sarah and I didn’t pay too much attention to them. We were having too much fun getting to know each other.
Bill and Gina guided us down to the Underground. We rode one of the lines for a while. Then we changed to a different line, which we rode for a while. We changed to a third line, which we rode for a while.
Sarah and I were still focusing on getting to know each other.
Eventually, Sarah realized that it was approaching 3:00, and we still hadn’t gotten close to where we thought we should be. And, it was too close to curtain time for us to meander any longer. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
She guided us up out of the Tube station, and found a Constable (police officer to us Americans), and asked how we get to Haymarket Street. “Oh, no problem,” he said. “Just get on a bus to Piccadilly Circus. When you get off, you’ll see Haymarket Street, and you’ll be able to see the theatre from there.”
So we did.
Piccadilly Circus is a roundabout traffic circle that several streets open onto. One of those is Haymarket Street. Sure enough, when we got off the bus at Piccadilly Circus, we could look down Haymarket Street and see Her Magesty’s Theatre.
I happened to look down one of the other streets that opens onto Piccadilly Circus…
…And saw the restaurant where we ate lunch.
We spent the entire day on the Underground in order to get to someplace that was a five-minute walk away.
As a result, the ONLY thing we saw of London that day was… the Underground.
It just goes to show that, if you rely on someone to show you the way, it’s a really good idea to make sure that they know what they’re doing.
The same is true of just about anything that you want to learn how to do. If you want to build a new skill or take on a new project, the best thing to do is to find someone who has already done it and model them. By modeling someone who has a skill, you can actually cut years or even decades off your own journey to develop that skill.
When building a business, for example, you want to find and model someone who has already built a successful business in the same industry as yours. Likewise, if you want to take up a sport such as golf, then you want to spend time with the golf pro to get it right. If you want to build a social media audience, then you want to look at several people who have engaged audiences like the audience you want to have and model what they do.
The key is for you to be comfortable that they know what they’re doing.
After all… there’s a lot to see in London besides the Underground.
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