In kendo and other Japanese martial arts, the concept of technique (waza) is important beyond being a mere skill for overcoming the opponent. In practicing budo, the martial way, there is a notion of faith in the technique. That is, we can concentrate on perfecting the skill instead of focussing on the end result.
In scientific research also, we don’t know the end result (this is the nature of research), but we trust that the process developed by the generations of earlier researchers, combined with our own experience and skills, would lead to a productive outcome (i.e. improved understanding of the physical phenomenon.)
The issue of valuing productivity over presence, which many authors and philosophers discussed over the years, is also related to the lack of trust in the established system, the process of developing one’s skills. This leads to the current popularity of “life hacks“, looking for shortcuts to overcome inertia and inefficiency of the conventional ways of doing things. Eastern martial arts are in the unique position in this respect. Their systems of training, which are deeply rooted in philosophy, have been polished over many generations of practitioners. Knowing that countless numbers of them paid the huge price (sometimes, their lives) for evolving the system to the current level, makes trusting the process easier.
.) Capturing the start of the race, when the athletes jump into the pool, requires even shorter exposure times (as short as 1/1600 sec with a 
at 70 mm.)
. Instead of the “soccer mode”, I experimented with the “tennis mode”, which ignores the objects that appear between the lens and the subject during tracking. This mode helped with keeping the focus on the athletes’ faces behind the splashes, which tend to confuse the autofocus.
There are several factors that contribute to apparent sharpness. Of course, obtaining correct focus is of primary importance. Camera shake and motion blur (due to slow stutter speed) also result in loss of detail. If the image is under-exposed, the details are lost because of the low contrast, not because of the missed focus.
“). The idea is that 20% of work produces 80% of the results, so in principle, one can become fairly proficient, or al least well above average, in a certain activity (e.g. speaking a foreign language, painting, taking photos, playing a musical instrument, etc.) in a relatively short amount of time.
The idea of hacking the life-long learning is appealing, but I cannot help but think that something is missing if the “hacker mentality” is taken at face value. I just saw a documentary about top sushi chefs in Japan called “
I have recently came across a reference to a book by Steven Kotler called “
Timing is an important aspect in Japanese calligraphy (shodo) and martial arts such as kendo. In the latter case, it is, perhaps, not surprising. In calligraphy also, I found that timing of individual brushstrokes is so important that learning the technique from the books, without a teacher, is nearly impossible.
I wrote earlier that for me personally, one of the biggest benefits of 
