This reminds me actually a lot of Jiro Ono (famed sushi-maker).
"Once you decide on your occupation, you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That's the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably."
I wrote the article above and also visited Jiro when Jiro himself was making the sushi. There are similarities between both Kikuno and Jiro in their commitment to a craft, almost at the expense of everything else. This is something I rarely find outside Japan (which is also where you find family businesses specialising in niche crafts like temple bells and maki-e lacquerware in their 20th or 30th generation).
But one thing worth pointing out about Jiro is that while the food is very, very good, both in terms of technical execution and taste, the experience is not typical of a high-end restaurant. Jiro the man is extremely severe and focused on his work, while the sushi comes at a very brisk pace. For the boiled octopus for instance, you have to eat it immediately after it is served. If not Jiro will remind you to, once and then a second time more sternly. He expects his clients to respect his craft as much as he does.
Worth watching if only to see that learning to fry a good omelette with Jiro's approach apparently takes a couple of years. Though it probably has more to do with the "never complain" part rather than perfecting the actual cooking skills.
Regardless of culture, it can be a source of happiness for people who are extrinsically motivated.
Taking myself as an example, I've learned over the years that I respond to affirmation a lot more than I'd like to admit (always thought that was "shallow", until I realized I'm like that). In turn, if I produce good work that holds me in honorable regard, it creates affirmation that drives me. This is a way for me to hack my personality trait into something good. Of course, there are pitfalls in that failure produces the opposite result and I must not reduce my identity to the result of my work.
If you've been brought up with certain values, then undoubtedly your happiness would entail fulfillment/achievement of those. In today's cosmopolitan world, we forget that not too long ago, societies were very very different in terms of the things that they collectively valued and thus pursued.
I think the idea is that the key to being regarded honorably is to be really good at what you claim you do. And a life time is only long enough to master, i mean, really master, a single thing.
I think it must be a totally alien, or even irritating, idea to a bunch who expects to paid enormous sum of money because they have done a crash course in JavaScript spanning a month and claims to be able to build websites that can "deliver value" to the business..
That is considering they can even grasp the idea of things like "honor", which itself is a rather unpopular idea because it often gets in the way of making money....
>I think it must be a totally alien, or even irritating, idea to a bunch who expects to paid enormous sum of money because they have done a crash course in JavaScript spanning a month and claims to be able to build websites that can "deliver value" to the business..
What's funny is that some of them are actually being paid enormous sums of money for very little skill investment.
So in light of that, programming is apparently not a field that expects you to master anything before your salary is maximized.
Excellent comment. I feel this while taking a mind numbing course on "Spring Cloud". Everything about it drips of mediocrity, but I can add "Expert in Spring Cloud' to CV and get hired by company who wouldn't care a bit about carefully written software.
We don't care about money. All I want to do is make better sushi. I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. trying to reach the top... but no one knows where the top is. Even at my age, after decades of work... I don't think I have achieved perfection. But I feel ecstatic all day... I love making sushi. I've never once hated this job. I fell in love with my work and gave my life to it. Even though I'm eighty five years old... I don't feel like retiring. That's how I feel.
Take in consideration the culture difference here. In Japan perfect the craft is considered highly valuable (when the culture in USA, is about get more profits).
So, I assume that this apply only if you like the job. If you don't like the job, how can you actually commit to it?
I remember an old documentary (forget the name, sorry) that show that the government(?) give funds to people like him that still get alive old ways to do stuff. I remember the documentary talk about build samurai swords, pottery and jeans(?). This last one stuck to me because was claimed the jeans will last 100 years or something like that.
Well, given enough effort, a person actually passionate about his work is indistinguishable from a person just faking it, which is also indistinguishable from a person who just does whatever - but for whatever reason is curious enough to try and get to the bottom of it.
Can't say that you can really tell what's on his mind.
Do you really think that someone passionate about work is indistinguishable from someone "faking it" after 40 years? I can't imagine doing what I would consider a mundane task for even 5 years straight at regular work hours. 20+ years and I think you would be able to distinguish someone who's doing it for the money and someone who's passionate about the task.
Well, I didn't explicitly take the time scale into account. Or rather, it was like I assumed it was arbitrarily small. But I wouldn't exclude possibility that someone would try to hammer through his own head that he enjoys a job which he loathes through forty years. Sometimes humans can be strange like that.
Just imagine that the job becomes like a surrogate to the persons' actual identity. They identify with their own job and think it makes their lives meaningful even though they might intensely dislike it. For instance, the people I've met who work in medicine who were very much like that - one of my best friends went through med school. Where I live doctors often work long hours besides having extremely stressful jobs (and so take self-comforting addictions like smoking, caffeine abuse and drinking). It seems as if they're often led into the profession by rather unlofty motives like pay or prestige, but I also know that many give some inherent value to their work because they're helping people. Would they'd be better off in another job? I know it's not up to me to tell, I feel as if many would. Specially the ones very much sensitive about patient loss. Because it's a hard thing to deal with anyway, but it hits them the most.
So yeah, I think that someone might stay in a profession he might not actually personally like for some arbitrarily long periods of time. At least in principle. Don't know how it might apply to other professions though, because I don't see why people would keep programming for ethical reasons - unless they're deathly afraid of the coming machine revolution.
20+ years and someone who started out faking it would have begun to actually care. After 40 years, they would be much less distinguishable than after 5.
It's a terminal preference that's alien to me, certainly. No more "good" or "bad" than the terminal preference a salmon has to swim upstream, fertilize eggs and die; it is what it is.
Now, if the question is whether this really is his terminal preference, or whether he misunderstands his own deepest desires and might, under different conditions, have suffered a "mid-life crisis" realizing he hasn't satisfied his true goals after all... I can't really say. You'd have to ask him. Probably after getting him very drunk, because "has your life been a mistake" is not the type of thing you make small-talk about.
I think the fact that he was on his own on the street at age 9 or thereabouts and had to find work to survive would probably play a big part. Even if he hated it to start, by the time he had the freedom of making the choice to do something else he was probably truly into it.
That's a tough question. I think it would be best to not have to "force yourself" and just go with your inner flow, however that might be a fantasy for anything other than pure consumption.
"Once you decide on your occupation, you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That's the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably."