Doodle Card

 

Forget it when it’s over.
済んだら忘れよう。

 

In the past several months, people emailed and requested me to draw something. However some of them quickly lost interest and never responded to my reply.

That’s okay. That’s how we humans behave, and I don’t have any control over what others do.

If we care too much about what others do, it can be a huge distraction. All we need to do is forget and refocus. Just forget what happened without adding any narratives to it. Then refocus on what matters most to us. This 2-step approach helps us survive in the era of information overload.

 

 

Don’t let others devalue your time.
他人に自分の時間の価値を下げさせない。

 

Managing time is essential. But it’s not about YOUR time, it’s other’s time.

The value of time is the same for everyone. No matter what we do during the day — CEO, janitor, housewife or student — an hour is an hour. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s THE ONE hour of our limited lives.

The problem is, some people think their time is more important and precious than others. They don’t care even if they waste other’s time, and they get furious or feel offended if someone wastes their time.

The potential problem of any productivity hacks exists here — such hacks may save our time while wasting other’s time. “Focus on what matters to you” — this advice sounds great, but it doesn’t mean that we have the right to spend other’s time for us as much as we want. We have to design how things work from a holistic point of view.

Our social status never changes the value of time. The ultimate productivity hack is to save everyone’s time and to increase output exponentially. It’s worth challenging if you are a productivity enthusiast.

 

 

Stay calm.
冷静なままでいよう。

 

‘Busy’ is written in Japanese with the ideogram meaning ‘lose one’s mind.’

In Japan people often say, especially in a business environment, “Don’t be busy, otherwise you are going to lose your mind. Stay calm no matter what happens.” Ironically, this phrase is also used as an excuse to dump many tasks on you – people don’t want you to get mad at them.

Not a few Japanese people unconsciously believe that ’being busy’ is equal to ‘losing your mind’ — or ‘mindless.’ The fact is — it is completely possible for us to be mindful while we have many things to do, as many productive people all over the world do every day.

Find out ONE thing that matters most right now. Focus on the ONE thing and get it done. Then repeat.

This will keep you from losing your mind even when you are extremely busy. We have to stay calm for the sake of ourselves, not anyone else.

 

 

Suffering is optional.
苦しむか否かは自分次第。

 

One of my best decisions in my life is to stop reading self-help books that have been published in the last 100 years.

Instead, I go back to the classic books and writings — including the ones written in the era of the Roman Empire. These books tell us that, even thousands years ago, we humans had the similar sufferings as we have now. And that millions of self-help books published recently are not a silver bullet.

In our life, there seems to be always something that we could suffer from. Even though we live in developed countries. But if we consciously see things around us — we will notice that nothing really suffers us. They just exist or appear in front of us, and we just choose to be suffered from them.

We can always live without choosing to be suffered. And that’s the ultimate self-help approach.

 

 

See both sides of the equation.
モノゴトの両面を見よう。

 

We believe what we want to believe.

I used to have hundreds of self-improvement & self-help books. I believed these books would help me and improve my life. That was what I wanted to believe. But in reality, buying these books might have helped the author and improved the author’s life more than they did for me. Once you got to know well about the business model of the industry, you can easily recognize that these books are just one type of cheap front-end products that lead you to expensive & profitable back-end products.

There are many good self-improvement & self-help books out there. I do not deny the value of them — especially because there are very mediocre ones as well. But if you only see one side of the equation — i.e. purchaser or consumer — your view can be easily distorted. And you might spend too much money for what you believe, which is also distorted by someone’s intention.

There is nothing that is made purely for the sake of us. Someone is making money from it.

It is always better for us to see the big picture before making a decision. It doesn’t mean that we have to be skeptical — we just have to have a broader view and see what it is. Then make conscious decisions. It will be much better than impulsive or emotional decisions.