Our Reason for Being
What can the Japanese people - one of the hardest working cultures and societies across the industrialised globe - teach us about dedication and balance?
Back in February I went on a family holiday to Tokyo, Japan. It was my first overseas trip in 5 years, and the first time we were travelling with our 4-year old daughter. Travelling with children is akin to receiving a parental performance evaluation you didn’t quite ask for. Every time my daughter responded to different situations, new people, foreign languages, and “exotic” foods (that weren’t perfectly symmetrical) in a less than ideal way I felt my ears burning.
We simply assumed the super polite Japanese commuters around us were constantly judging us (spotlight effect anyone?), and the experience was equal parts hilarious and humiliating. Upon reflection at the end of the trip, my wife and I concluded that we barely scraped a pass on the parenting report card this time around.
The whole point of this Tokyo getaway was to try and relax before the start of the teaching semester, but all I could see around me was inspiration. Inspiration for how dedicated, committed, and hardworking every professional was at their job, and how seamless and coordinated the whole city seemed to be around a common purpose. It’s not my first time in Japan, but for some reason (Fatherhood? Age? Burnout?) the culture resonated more deeply with me this time around.
Today let’s explore 2 Japanese philosophies on work and life, and see if we can draw inspiration from them to apply towards our own version of balance:
IKIGAI
Our reason for being, our purpose in life.
In Japan this is very much work-focused but Ikigai emphasises the idea that work is not just something to do to pay the bills. In an ideal setup work should be the overlap between what we love, what we are good at, what the world needs, and what we can get paid for to sustain our lives. This is what a truly motivating reason should look and feel like to get up every morning. It’s what fulfils us, gives us happiness and satisfaction WHILE paying the bills. Contributing to a healthier and balanced mindset, irrespective of the intensity or duration of the work.
Ikigai is a beautiful concept, but it can be far from your reality if your current job is gruelling and not what you’d like to do 10 years from now. Or maybe you don’t know exactly what it is that you love doing, or the marketplace seems to be shrinking in the skillset you’ve honed over several years.
It all comes back to life-long learning, and the fact that none of us are finished products. The more we strive to learn new things and develop skills outside of our immediate comfort zone, the higher the likelihood that what we are good at overlaps with what the world needs. It is very fulfilling for what you are good at to be needed by the world writ large, and in time you could even grow to love this feeling of being valued, which hopefully forces the market to pay you competitively for your services.
Learning is a transformative virtuous cycle, and it’s why I love doing what I do. I conduct scientific experiments, communicate to different people from all walks of life every single day, and make online content in the form of videos and podcasts that fulfils me creatively.
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.
The problem though is that the things I’m trying to learn are complex multifaceted skillsets - writing books and articles, video production, audio engineering for podcasts, and it always feels like I’m not quite there yet with the quality of output in anything I do.
If we all need to continue learning new things to maximise our chance at Ikigai, we need to become better and quicker at learning full stop. Which brings me to…
SHU-HA-RI
Learn the basics, imitate, then innovate.
Shu-Ha-Ri gives us a template for learning - from a novice all the way to an expert. Learn the basics, by reading as much as possible, imitate the work of a mentor or supervisor who knows more than you, then apply the knowledge towards a new situation to cement your understanding.
I am a big believer of Shu-Ha-Ri simply because I have used this many times to great effect in my career and life. When studying - read as broadly as you can, try to mimic the activity of an expert by testing yourself using practice exams, then apply that knowledge towards new problems and new questions. In science, learning lab skills using the lab mimic method - read protocols, watch someone else do the technique, try to copy them, and go back through your experiment to see how it can be tweaked. On the creative front - find a photographer or YouTuber whose work I love, try to copy the essence of their work, fall well short of the mark, and compare and contrast until I can close the gap in quality over time.
I can give you dozens of examples of how this has worked for me, and sometimes I skip over the “Shu”, and go straight to the “Ri”. Try to imitate an expert straight away and of course fail spectacularly. Trying then to digest the reason for that failure is very instructive, then going back to learn the basics of what now has become known unknowns - questions I didn’t even know I needed the answers for, to mature and develop.
This happened when I first started academic writing. I thought I was good enough at writing and communicating, until I tried to submit an abstract for a scientific conference. Failed, wasn’t accepted, then I decided to systematically look at accepted abstracts over 10 years of that conference to see what the patterns were.
Short and concise review of field.
Get straight to the point about the gap in the literature
How your key findings are considered innovative.
No extraneous fluff, straight to the point on what reviewers typically look for.
This is really different from education conferences and when I applied for those, I needed to repeat the learning process - Shu-Ha-Ri - but this time I came in a little ahead of the game. This whole learning process goes by many different names. On my channel alone the lab mimic method for learning lab skills, the 3-stage uncertainty framework for overcoming impostor syndrome, all build off this idea.
The great thing is you don’t need anyone’s permission anymore to learn amazing skills via the internet - almost everything you can imagine is freely accessible somewhere online. Depending on your innate ability and natural talents though, your starting point on the development curve may be very far ahead, far behind, or just somewhere in the middle compared to that of the expert. There’s no guarantee of any set timeline for your development, and learning can be frustrating. We may be impatient waiting for the arrival for our more accomplished and capable future selves, but the Japanese have an answer for this too…
Have you been transformed by overseas travel? Where have you drawn unexpected inspiration from, to the point where those external influences affect your everyday life?
What’s your reason for being?
Next time let’s talk about Kaizen, Wabi-Sabi, and my favourite Japanese philosophy - Omotenashi.
Talk soon,
Jack.
