The One Percent Rule
We may be impatient waiting for the arrival for our more accomplished and capable selves, but the Japanese have an answer for this.
Back in February I went on a family holiday to Tokyo, Japan and all I could see around me was inspiration. As I sorted through the thousands of photos and videos I captured of everyday life in Metropolitan Tokyo, the spirit and philosophy of Japanese work ethic permeated through every frame.
Last week I discussed how the Japanese philosophies Ikigai and Shu-Ha-Ri can provide us with both the motivation and the framework to develop life-long learning habits to fulfil our reason for being. Let’s continue that conversation today by exploring three more Japanese philosophies surrounding productivity, starting with:
The philosophy of continuous improvement over time, small incremental changes to daily habits and routines that will ultimately accumulate into something bigger, better than the sum of its parts.
Kaizen applies to all aspects of my life - the gadgets, cameras, phones, computers I’m using - hopefully all get a little bit better and more efficient in the software they are running over time. The classes I teach - every semester is a new cohort of students, and a new chance to create learning materials that will improve upon the previous semester to engage and motivate as many new people as possible. Each research paper I write, each conference talk I give, each committee I’m asked to lead, each time I do it I am getting more reps that will lead me to become a little better at these things each time around.
The photos I take, videos I make, each one is a chance to reflect on the previous creative endeavour, and again just get a little bit better. It’s the focus on the moment, on the current increment or iteration, that will ultimately lead us to exponential growth.
It’s the One Percent Rule - a sentiment reflected in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear:
Getting 1% better at a skill each day seems manageable, and if you maintain this for 365 days you’ll end up 37 times better at the skill than you were at the start of the year.
Insulin price cuts, artificial sweeteners and heart disease, and blood-glucose monitoring Apple Watches? In episode 4 of the Crossover Connections Podcast, Jack and Amanda discuss the recent flurry of headlines surrounding diabetes drugs and treatment. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or watch the full video episode on YouTube.
It’s just simple maths, and the Japanese people were able to distil this into one concept - Kaizen. The beautiful thing about Kaizen is that it applies to everyone and everything. It can be practical pragmatic skills, or a trade or craft that takes years to master, or a creative endeavour with no obvious goalposts. Sure everyone can get in a rut and feel stagnant about their work and life, but growth is not a pie in the sky fantasy. Growth doesn’t need to be a home-run, we just need to be a tiny bit better than we were yesterday. I guess one issue with this could be how we define “better”, especially in subjective areas with qualitative judgement calls, reliant on aesthetics and individual opinion. Of course, the Japanese have a philosophy for this too:
The beauty of imperfection, transience, and simplicity.
A pair of jeans is not beautiful because of the colour or the fit, but because of how it has faded over time into something that reflects the person who wore it. The jeans were never meant to stay perfect forever, and the transience of the indigo dye is its own imperfect sense of beauty. The natural colour of vegetable-tanned leather will darken and patina with use overtime, developing into something richer and with more depth than any brand new item you can buy off the shelf.
The work that we do - the artefacts of our efforts - are not meant to represent or define us for the entirety of our careers - they’re simply a snapshot, a memento of what we were able to produce under those conditions at that point in time, before moving on to new projects to start all over again, once again.
The impermanence of our current abilities is something to be savoured, not diminished or scoffed at. It’s totally OK that I’m not good at everything just yet, that my teaching, writing, and film-making aren’t at some pre-defined level of quality, that I’m not great at balancing my work and personal lives. We should feel excited about being works in progress, because by definition it means we have more chances to learn, more bites at the apple. The Japanese people find beauty in imperfection, and looking back on old work as an exercise to see how far we’ve come is a mentality shift we can all slowly make. We are the product of our work, not the other way around.
Service without expecting a reward in return. Sincere appreciation for those around us, doing our best to help others as that is its own reward.
This is easy to say, but almost impossible to live by, but in Japan it seeps into every aspect of life. When you land at the airport, there are 50 people lined up with signs in all different languages, making sure tourists know which line to queue up in and which forms to fill out. The bus, train, and taxi drivers, the cleaners, restaurant workers, the salarymen - there’s no job too menial, no task too mundane to not give it your all in service of others.
I work in a field that is all about others - science and teaching, but I fall short of this mark every single day. I become lost in the weeds of my own insecurities, and don’t focus enough on the experience of others through my work. I was recently invited on a US podcast - Signal & Sense - to talk about Artificial Intelligence and the havoc something like Chat GPT transformed all of teaching overnight. The podcasts hosts Dan and Jodah asked me:
“What does it even mean to be human anymore?”
It has to be connecting to others right?
To relate and empathise with the experiences of those around us in a way that machines cannot?
I wish I could live out the true essence of omotenashi and be selfless with the intention behind the work that I do, but I don’t really have to? The positive vibes I personally get from truly helping others through my work means that it is really quite selfish of me to want to do a good job in service of others. Hopefully over time I can learn to help others irrespective of my own feelings, good, bad or indifferent.
At the end of the day we’re all imperfect, transient works in progress.
Talk soon,
Jack.
