Doodle

 

Build your own road.
自分だけの道程を築こう。

 

People would say, “Life is a long and winding road.” But who knows?

We just don’t know how our life is going to be. There is no GPS for our life; if there were, it was made by someone else trying to navigate you to where they want you to go. Banking, insurance, recruitment, books and information products — we can see many examples of such manipulation on TV commercials or web advertisements.

Our life is all about building a road for our own sake. Other people might think of the road as their ideal, but we better not force them to follow — it’s their choice, and they are also on the way to build their own road. They can (and most of the time, will) take a different path at some point along the way.

Don’t blindly follow the road someone built, or the ones that any social norms told you to follow. You are the only person who know where you want to go.

 

 

Improvise.
即興でやろう。

 

I believe the power of practicing. The more you do, the better you get. But something unexpected almost always happens on a real stage — as well as our real life.

Embrace and enjoy the unexpected. Have fun being in the situation. Focus on what you can do at this exact moment. Believe what you did during your hard practice.

What you do in the unexpected situation is also the outcome of your continuous practice. If you are fully immersed in your work, it can become your best work.

 

 

Keep your own score.
自分だけの得点をつけよう。

 

What kind of numbers do you have in your mind?

Number of projects you are working on. Leads from potential customers. Contacts of your email list. Your weight. You name it.

Whatever it is, what is it for? What does it mean to you? What would you get, or accomplish, after pursuing the number? Is it worthwhile?

Let us focus only on the numbers that matters most to each of us. The rest is just a distraction.

 

 

Your family is paramount.
家族は何よりも大切。

 

“They thought that was an excuse.”

About twenty years ago, my boss told me. I was just hired by a company that gave me an accountant job. When I signed an offer letter, HR manager sitting in front of me asked me if my parents knew about the offer. I briefly mentioned that my parents were sick and in hospital. Then the manager frowned a bit and said, “Did you talk about that during the interview?”

According to my boss — well, ‘ex-boss’ already — management of the company thought of my statement as a sign of weakness. A lack of commitment to my job. Just because I mentioned my sick parents. The company didn’t withdraw a job offer because of that, but this episode gave me a strong doubt about the culture of the company — a lack of humanity. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I proved myself right later, and left the company.

Our family is as important as our life. Our employer will never be more important than our family. Of course we need a job (or our own business) to make a living, but that doesn’t mean we must sacrifice our family to get a salary. Our employer is replaceable. Our family is (basically) not.

We are all mortal beings. Do your best to spend more time with your family. After they are gone — like my parents — we can never catch up on it, although they will keep living in our heart.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

 

Work hard, think harder.
頑張って働き、より頑張って考えよう。

 

Mediocre leaders only let us do the work. They don’t even understand why we do the work. “Hey, our big boss wants us to do this right now!”

Good leaders explain why we do the work so that we can understand where to go.

Great leaders let us think why we do the work, then reconcile it with something much bigger. They help us see things in a big picture while doing the work in front of us. They know we work better when we think harder.