Doodle

 

Keep people busy with thinking.
他の人たちを「考えること」で忙しくさせよう。

 

“That young guy focuses on taking notes. He must be good.”

My ex-boss told me. “He’s probably just busy taking notes because Mr. X keeps talking”, I said. Then he replied, “No you don’t understand. He can be a great assistant of ours.”

Some people think of you as a good, capable and trustworthy person if you work really hard on note taking. That’s probably because they think you respect and carefully listen to what they say.

But the reality is, most of the time, you are just busy taking notes without thinking. You just focus on catching words without deliberating why someone says something. That’s completely a waste of our brain power.

Let us liberate people from mindless note-taking. Ask questions. Encourage people to speak out. Help people’s brain work for you and everyone else.

This is the way to make everyone really good.

 

 

High and low lie side-by-side.
天国と地獄は隣り合わせ。

 

Things you are good at don’t always make you happy.

A quarter-century ago, I was very good at accounting and finance. I thought that handling numbers was second nature to me. It helped me make a six figure salary in my twenties.

But there was a problem.

Early in my thirties, I realized that I don’t like accounting and finance. I gradually disliked them while working really hard on my job. That gave me chronic migraine. I often got sick. I was cheating myself.

We sometimes get trapped by the things that we’re very good at AND that people want us to do. These things give us great opportunities. But if we don’t like doing what we are good at, it can make us sick — and might kill us someday.

If you can’t find a way to love what you are good at, start doing what you love. While things you are good at are making money for you, do whatever you can do to be good at things you love. Find people who want or need what you love doing. Then you can get out of the trap.

’Love what you do’ — this cliche can save your life.

 

 

Weirdness is much better than sameness.
奇妙であることは、似ていることよりずっと良い。

 

In Japan, there is a proverb meaning that “if you stick out, you get hammered”.

And this is exactly true. If you are something different from others, you feel strong social pressure that forces you to be similar with everyone else. It happens when you are different enough to be noticed AND similar enough to make people feel that you can be under their influence.

If you are WAY different from others, people just stop evaluating you and say ‘you are weird’.

That gives you freedom. The freedom to stick out. The freedom to do whatever you like to experiment. You feel less social pressure because people think you are weird.

But do it intentionally. Be aware of your weirdness and how it differs from the social norm. Working on the gap will give you a chance to change your reputation from ‘weird’ to ‘remarkable’.

 

 

Catch and incubate your crazy ideas.
ばかげたアイデアを捕えて、育てよう。

 

While I’m sleeping, a lot of ideas come up.

If I don’t jot them down, those ideas are gone. I can hardly recall them. So I always have a small notebook or an iPhone on the bedside.

Even when I write down the ideas, it’s hard to understand what they are. Too abstract. Too ridiculous. Too impractical. Sometimes I can’t even recognize the language I used to take notes.

But that’s okay. That’s how our subconscious is. If we catch a piece of our crazy thoughts in any way, it starts growing. Someday it might become a great idea. Or might remain silly as it originally was.

The only way to generate a great idea is to keep generating ideas. No matter how silly they are. Just keep going.

 

 

Use your biases wisely.
偏見を賢く利用しよう。

 

After I spent 7 years in the U.S., I finally noticed what ethnicism really is.

My ex-boss preferred talking only with Japanese, although the company’s operation was already multinational. “It’s your job to talk to American employees”, he said.

After I came back to Japan, I visited my hometown. Then I realized that people don’t like foreigners with no reason. Most of them say “I don’t understand them”, although they don’t even try to interact with foreign people.

We are all biased in a sense. It’s impossible for us to be completely free from biased thoughts. But it makes a huge difference in our life and business if we are aware of our own biases and take advantage of them as an opportunity.