bullet train we on which we’re traveling so smoothly towards Kyoto almost flies over the rails; it is the fruit of thousands of hours of work by engineers who did not give up on a shared dream until they had fulfilled it.
Perseverance is one of the values at the forefront of the Japanese mentality. In many Japanese comics and animated shows, the main character often reveals a childhood in which they demonstrate quite a few shortcomings rather than great abilities, but they have a purpose or objective in life—an ikigai that makes them overcome obstacles and carry on.
Through this personal horizon you will gain wisdom and experience continual self-improvement until you become the hero you set out to be. It is also is far more realistic and achievable than a comic book scenario in which the hero’s super powers are innate, and the drive that moves them stems from anger or ambition or a desire for vengeance.
Simple goals lead to great achievements
Another characteristic of Japanese heroes is that their objectives are straightforward, simple and pure; they do not have great ambitions.
A typical manga storyline has the leading character wanting to be a good sushi chef, or the best television presenter in his province, or a realtor. There is even a television series— Shinkansen Girl—about the life of the bullet train passenger service attendants and how they always strive to improve the way they serve the customers.
They are simple goals, which anyone can identify with, but persevering even in simple goals leads to achieving great personal milestones.
Along with perseverance, patience is a value the Japanese exercise constantly. But this patience does not mean that they wait for things to happen, as if they are expecting some outside miracle to occur. Rather, they practice patience along with perseverance until they achieve what they set out to do.
“If you want to heat a rock,
sit on it for a hundred years.”
JAPANESE PROVERB
Doing it as well as possible
The value of perseverance is ubiquitous in the Japanese language and in many of the expressions used on a daily basis.
One of the first words you learn when you study Japanese is ganbarimasu, 頑張ります, which is normally translated as “doing it as well as possible.” The first two characters that make up the word are 頑, which means “stubborn” or “tenacious” and 張, which means “stretch” or “expand.”
Put together, the meaning would be something along the lines of “stretch and expand my stubbornness/objective as far as possible.”
The word ganbarimasu is at the heart of the expression ganbatte kudasai, which means “do it as well as possible,” but could be more literally translated as “be stubborn and determined until you achieve what you aimed to do.” It is widely used in sporting circles for mutual encouragement and also in the business world when new challenges are being faced.
The ganbarimasu philosophy means not stopping until an objective has been reached.
A 100-year plan
The new Japanese bullet train that will connect Tokyo with Nagoya (286 km) in less than forty minutes will become operational in 2027. And not only is everything planned down to the last detail right up until 2027, but there are already plans to use the same magnetic levitation system to reach Osaka in 2045. Likewise, it has been calculated that by the year 2120 this investment in technology will no longer carry a debt, but will begin to make a profit both for JR (Japan Railways) and for the Japanese government.
A plan of more than 100 years!
Before accelerating our personal bullet train, it is important to be clear what our final destination is and at which stations we will need to call.
The shinkansen effect driven by perseverance and ganbarimasu may be summarized by this formula:
Patience without action leads to a passive life.
Patience with perseverance leads to us fulfilling our goals.
The Man Who Practices
The Swedish psychologist Anders Ericcson, author, with Robert Pool, of the book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, points out that Homo Sapiens (the man who knows) should actually be called Homo Exercens (the man who practices), since humans are the only species aware that it is possible to improve through practicing.
However, not all types of practice lead to progress. Ericcson divides them into two typologies:
I. NAÏVE PRACTICE. This type that consists of simply dedicating time to something, indiscriminately. Regardless of how many hours you devote to something, if you do it inefficiently or wrongly, you will not make the progress you hoped for.
II. DELIBERATE PRACTICE. This type has a well-designed plan for reaching your goal. Ericcson recommends three main guidelines for this kind of practice:
1. Define the targets. That way, you will know which steps to take and which direction to go in order to reach your goal.
2. Give it your full attention. This will allow you to adapt to different situations and problems without losing focus.
3. Ask for constant feedback to check that you’re on the right track, and if not, make the necessary adjustments.
NOTE: see details and implementation in Chapter 5—Feedback: “How others see us,” in which we examine techniques for asking for feedback effectively.
The 10,000-hour rule
Inspired by Ericsson’s research, a decade ago, the British journalist Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book Outliers in which he asked himself why only some people succeed.
Although genetics, family circumstances and education undoubtedly have their part to play in the path to success, Gladwell points out that 10,000 hours of practice are necessary in order to succeed. And to illustrate this he cites two cases of geniuses who met this dedication quota before “blossoming”:
1. MOZART. Although he began to compose at the age of seven, and some of his teenage pieces are remarkable, he wrote his great works after he was twenty-one, by which time he had accumulated over 10,000 hours composing, practicing and performing in public.
2. THE BEATLES. They too required these 10,000 hours to finally make it big. A good deal of this practicing was done in Hamburg, where they regularly performed from August 1960 to December 1962 in four different clubs, where they intensively perfected their skills. Upon their return to England, they were ready for success.
“We are what we do repeatedly.”
ARISTOTLE
Now imagine something new you would like to learn.
Before programming the time you are going to devote to it, let’s take a look at Gladwell’s summary of the different levels that can be reached depending on how much time is devoted to practice:
a. With 1 hour: we
