Six books by the lifts

Someone in a building in Dubai put a narrow shelf in the lobby with a handwritten card inviting residents to take a book and leave one. For the first month it was close to useless.

There were six books on it, two of them in a language few residents read. Nobody left anything. A cleaner moved it twice because it was in the way. Anyone walking past would have said the idea had not worked.

The woman who put it there kept at it. She added a few of her own each week. She moved the shelf next to the lifts, where people stand still with nothing to do. A neighbour left a children's book, then another, and a parent noticed. Someone added a second shelf without asking.

Two years on it is the thing people mention when they describe the building. Children check it on the way home from school. Residents who have never spoken swap recommendations in the lift. Take it away now and the lobby would feel broken.

Almost nothing useful starts out useful. The first version is thin, awkward and easy to dismiss, and it stays that way for longer than anyone enjoys. What turns it into something people cannot do without is rarely a flash of genius. It is somebody refusing to give up on it while it is still slightly embarrassing, adding to it, showing it to people, fixing what is wrong.

Learning anything ourselves follows the same path. The first attempts at a language, a sport or a new neighbourhood barely work either. They are supposed to.