My thoughts on the craft, the process and the subjects
I like history. It has always been one of my favourite subjects to learn outside of work, but my interest in history is very casual. I enjoy the history of art and science, biographies of prominent historical figures and history of places to which I travel. Being an engineer, I have always felt that pursuit of history, while entertaining and intellectually stimulating, lacked the immediate usefulness beyond the obvious “learning from mistakes of others” sort of things.
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.
Recently, I have come across many discussion of hacking a certain process or system – achieving significant results in unconventional, often more efficient, ways. One of the observations about the hacker mentality that I particularly like is that “innovation” means not accepting the current norm. I like it because it seems that in the academic community, the term innovation is currently over-used, often without a clear idea of what it actually means.
The hacker approaches to problems, such as learning new skills, are often based on the Pareto principle, often referred to the 80/20 rule, which has been discussed by many authors (e.g. Tim Ferriss in his hugely popular “The 4-Hour Workweek
Consistency and routine are important for developing various skills, from photography to martial arts to research and teaching. However, I think that without some sense of excitement and the resulting enthusiasm, consistency alone is not effective. In fact, what is ultimately effective and satisfying is the state of “flow”, when self-censoring mode of thinking is turned off and we can “get out of our own way”, so to speak. This condition has a lot in common with the elusive state of “no mind” (mushin) that martial artists are striving to attain.
To me personally, the flow states are just glimpses of what is ultimately possible – they are not easy to either achieve or sustain. However, these moments are precious and powerful enough to help me maintain motivation and consistency in what I do.
An interesting similarity between calligraphy and kendo is that it is not the rhythm itself, but its variation that elevates the quality of technique. In kendo, varying the timing, breaking up the pattern of attacks and counter-attacks, adds the element of surprise for the opponent and makes the techniques less predictable. In calligraphy, varying the speed of the brushwork adds character to the writing, emphasizes individual characters (kanji) or certain elements of the characters and ultimately gives “interestingness” to the resulting image.
Mental preparation for a contest or an exam is necessary, but not sufficient, for an overall training regiment in kendo. This concept translates to any kind of learning or skill development.
I wrote earlier about photography contests, but I believe the value of competitions extends beyond receiving external feedback on your performance. It is learning about my subjective reactions to an atypical situation that I find most valuable.
Besides the pragmatic usefulness for learning and character development, there is a tremendous social aspect of competitions in any field. In kendo in particular, the comradery built by doing keiko and shiai with people from different countries, of different ages and walks of life is one of my most precious experiences and perhaps the greatest gift of this Way of the sword.
“No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”
– George Lucas (Yoda, “Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Taking up a new project implies a commitment to complete it one way or another, and this aspect alone diminishes freedom to choose to do something else in the future.
Having said this, there is also an inherent risk in choosing not to do new things. In fact, a finite probability of failing at something new becomes a certainty the moment we decide not to try it. Besides, it is often difficult to fail at something completely, which can make make even a failed attempt quite valuable as many authors, who advocate thinking big
Sometimes, it seems that the value of art is purely in its entertainment aspect. I believe that this is misleading, as art has a tremendous potential to educate us about universal principles that govern various fields, particularly about human nature, which plays a role in everything we do.
These days, we have to carefully manage consumption of information, which is conveniently and constantly available to us in various forms. Since our inbound bandwidth is limited, it may seem productive to limit the consumed information to that with immediately practical value, e.g. technical and non-fiction literature, documentary movies, reportage and scientific photos, etc. However, doing so would lead to missing the potential to expand our knowledge base beyond what is necessary to function on the daily basis within our current social and professional roles. In other words, focussing only on what is immediately and obviously useful does not provide an opportunity of significant, i.e. non-incremental, learning.
In teaching, relating the teacher’s personal experience with the material, including initial failures or struggles in learning it, is an important tool for establishing a working connection with the students. This is relevant to teaching in a general sense, not necessarily limited to the scope of academe. For example, in the context of photography, I find that showing some vulnerability by making it clear that I am in the process of learning the craft, helps avoid appearing as a know-it-all. Of course, this applies to interactions with other photographers, and not with clients or models, with whom projecting confidence in one’s skills is of paramount importance.
Some examples of good balance between vulnerability and helpfulness are writings of James Altucher, such as “The Power of No
On a dark and cold Saturday morning, I walked to a local cafe only to find it closed – the guy, who was supposed to open it, did not show up. While my original motivation for these Saturday morning walks was to break my usual morning routine, in other words, to deliberately have no defined pans, it turned out that looking forward to a hot cappuccino is itself a plan. Not surprisingly, unmet expectations are not fun.
It is well known that fear of not meeting one’s expectations often prevents us from trying new things. It turns out, though, that the so-called “worst case scenario,” in many cases, is not that bad in the big scheme of things. In the trivial case of the closed cafe, for example, I ended up having a (probably better) cup of coffee at home together with my wife.
So, if one can deliberately experience poverty or shame, can the same be done with spontaneity? I don’t see why not. I think it would be quite useful to anticipate that at some point in a project things will not go according to plan, and anticipate that it would be necessary engage intuition and creativity to the maximum. In fact, I sometimes engineer these creative or technical challenges by imposing constraints on my photography workflow. …Ok, sometimes, I just don’t plan ahead well enough, so the challenges arise naturally. Still, I’d like to think that treating the challenges as opportunities for learning is what the stoics would do.
