There has never been a day from last 10 years when I have not thought about work I do, the work people around me do and the work that is important! 2020 has just complicated things, when we saw what’s essential and what’s not! Although I won’t dwell much on this black swan event but I did spent lot of time this year on reading, exploring knowledge from the confines of my home and learning new things which I found interesting. But the essential question of the work that one does and how you derive the pleasure from work still remains unanswered, no matter how many books you read about state of flow or from Cal Newport!
There are no prizes for guessing that I love to travel and one of my favorite destination is Japan. Since, one can’t travel this year the next best thing you can do is to see videos of other’s on YouTube. It is during one such video on what normal people eat for lunch in Japan, I found gold!
In the video below from 3:07 to around 5:42 you will see how a wooden carton box maker has found the state of flow during his job. What you will notice is that even when he is not hammering a nail the is still tapping with his hammer. His colleague does something similar but has his own rhythm which is like “Jazz”.
You can read as many books as you want on how to find meaningful work and flow but this video, for me, speak volumes about what is the flow state, how you make meaning of your work and how a true master of an art looks like.
One can argue that making a wooden box for Apples of Aomori, is not really same as the life in Tech or in corporate. The challenges we face are seldom same and pressure to perform is higher. But I would argue that most problem solvers are just like the man in the video. First nail is always hard to place for him and that can be same case when we start on a project or anything new. We have to base our judgement on our past experience. I don’t think we normally try to solve problem which have nothing to do with our past experience like to have people from car industries trying to solve hard AI problems to make us cyborgs, unless you are Elon Musk!
To summarize, I think everyone should try to find rhythm in their work. If you want to call it “Flow” or passion or hustle, call it whatever you want. Just find your own rhythm and try to pace yourself accordingly. Remove all the distractions and focus on the task at hand. Even in this video the person right next to the first worker had a different rhythm and that’s like his finger print. For me we do not necessarily need to do same what other’s are doing even at a similar job but need to carve our own niche and style of work. After all, one size fits all is for baseball hats and NOT work!