Month: October 2024

“Nobody goes off-trail, and nobody walks alone.” That used to be Nori Brandyfoot’s motto. But now that she is traveling with no one but a mysterious wizard, helping him to find his home, she realizes she misses hers. Not the place, of course. For the constantly migrating Harfoots, there is no place. Only people, sharing adventures, journeying together—and those are who we really need to begin with.

One night, she gets lonely sitting by the fire. Thankfully, her new companion lacks anything but wisdom: “Strange…how that which is left behind can be the heaviest burden to carry,” he comments. “I knew it’d be hard,” Nori admits, “but this hard’s different.”

In a famous Zen story, two monks meet a girl who is stuck at a river. One of them carries her across. Back alone, hours later, the other monk bursts out that physical contact with the girl was inappropriate. The first monk replies: “I set her down long ago. Why are you still carrying her?”

Whether it’s someone we want to hold in our hearts or someone we want to forget—the heaviest burden can be that which is left behind. Choose purposefully, and remember that not everything you carry will strain only your back.

In Frank Herbert’s Dune trilogy, protagonist Paul Atreides is subjected to a painful trial early on. He uses what his people call “the Litany Against Fear” to steel his nerves and pass the test:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

It’s a powerful mantra, but fear can do more than just weaken us. It can also be a source of tremendous strength. When a lorry threatened to crush his car on the highway, one of my dad’s work colleagues ripped out his gear lever with one hand. That’s also power—and in this case, fear was its source, not its detractor.

Sure, like any emotion, you can let the fear pass through. But the stronger the fear, the harder it gets. Sometimes, it’s easier to channel the fear than to sidestep it. Allow it to focus your senses and direct your energy at a singular threat until it’s eliminated. When we’re in a creative zone of flow, everything else falls by the wayside. Peak fear can have the same effect, and it’s on us to decide when to let it.

Fear can be the mind-killer, or it can be the mind-stiller. It can obliterate you or the obstacle in your path. Choose whether to dodge or ride it, and every time you get it right, the end will be the same: Only you will remain.

…is to not care about the numbers. In the modern job market, taking offense at every rejection will slow your progress to a crawl. No matter how bad the email, no matter how ridiculous the reason or how indifferent the response, you must keep going. Only more numbers will lead to a win.

I’ve applied to 45 jobs, and of course, some rejections hurt more than others. But whenever I open LinkedIn, I see a post from someone who had to apply to 100, 285, or even over 1,000 jobs to finally score a gig. And while I don’t know how much effort these folks put into each application, I can see what Wolf of Wall Street‘s Matthew McConaughey already knows about my submissions: “Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up.”

It’s hard to put your heart and soul into a plea only for it to disappear into the vacuum that is HR’s unmonitored inbox. So is being hung up on for the 100th time, having yet another publisher call your manuscript “meh,” or getting ghosted yet again after what seemed like a great first date.

But in the long run, it’ll wear you out much more still to get on a self-designed emotional rollercoaster each time you experience rejection in its countless forms—especially if what you’re playing is a numbers game. Let the math roll off your toughened skin, and just keep marching until you succeed.

Yesterday, a ladybug flew into my office. I’m not used to seeing them at this time of the year. A quick google, however, revealed that my little friend was looking for a place to stay in the winter. Who knew they liked window frames so much?

I gently picked him up, placed him outside, and closed my window. “Ladybugs in October,” I thought. “Who could have guessed?”

Life is not a movie. No matter how often it rhymes, it’ll never repeat in exactly the same way. There’s always room for a new pattern. Expect anomalies, and you, too, may become one whenever you need to.

As usual, I had no idea why I’d woken up, but I did know what was about to follow: a good hour or so of chasing thought after thought in the middle of the night. I had more than one reason to be anxious. My business was in a vegetative state. My 40+ job applications had gone nowhere. And now, all of a sudden, the government was harassing me for tens of thousands of euros in tax payments that should have been done and dealt with years ago. Somehow, thinking sessions at 3 AM are never productive.

“Am I starting to reach the end of my rope?” “What if I don’t get a real win any time soon?” “What else can I even try to do?” After a solid 60 minutes of this and other mean comments, I looked at my thoughts and, for the first time, I noticed their colors. They were all black. “That can’t be good,” I mused. “No wonder it’s so dark in here.”

I let some of the thoughts pass, and they made way for others. Some of them were specifics of how I might handle my problems. Those were red, I believe. Others were more wholesome, even hopeful. They shone blue. Eventually, I remembered that I would neither solve my problems nor fall off the edge of the world that night and drifted back to sleep. But one idea stuck around: Inside my mind, I can paint the walls however I like. When it’s too dark, I can throw in some green. And when everything is yellow, I might mellow it out with some gray. You have this power too, you know?

We all have difficult seasons. We’ve all felt anxious at 3 AM. But you can choose the color of your thoughts. Don’t forget to bring your brush—and dip it into whichever bucket will let you paint the next sunrise.

14 years ago, my best friend and I had an idea for a waiter-less restaurant. It would have iPads leveled right into the table’s surface. You would order there, check out, and a few minutes later, the food would magically appear in front of you.

We thought about the layout of the restaurant. We mulled on where the food would come from. Would the kitchen be in the center, hidden behind the restaurant walls, with sliding doors opening so you can turn around and just grab your food? Would it have some mechanism to raise the food directly in front of you via a dumbwaiter, kind of like it works in the Great Hall in Harry Potter? We brainstormed for quite a while. I still have the sketches.

Of course, like most 19-year-olds tend to do, in the end, we did nothing with our idea. It’s a symptom of youth I wish I had treated earlier: Big dreams, little action. But to this day, once a year or so, I check on the state of waiterless restaurants. In the years hence, I’ve learned a lot about this concept.

For one, there are plenty of waiterless restaurants around the world today, and they all put their own unique spin on this idea. One place in Shanghai has little, vacuum-looking robots deliver your food on a sort of “robot highway” next to the tables. Tokyo has everything from robot arms pouring your coffee to a fully staffed restaurant with robot waiters to one where the robots are remote-controlled by home-bound people to give them something meaningful to do. And a Germany company from Nuremberg has tested and opened over 13 “rollercoaster restaurants” across the world, where the food slides right in front of you via a network of intricate tracks.

Recently, for the first time, I had the good fortune of visiting one of those restaurants. FoodLoop, it’s called, and it sits right in the heart of Europa-Park, Europe’s second-biggest theme park. My girlfriend and I sat down and ordered from iPads. Less than three minutes later, our drinks arrived. Thanks to the numbers on each item which matched the numbers on our seats, everything that slid down the tracks to our five-person table was quickly allocated to the right person. The pot with our salmon and potatoes was sealed with several rubber bands. It came fast, hot, and delicious. Given we were in a theme park, the meal wasn’t cheap, but that was to be expected. We paid and within less than half an hour, we could get back to more rides. Sweet!

It took over a decade, but finally, I went to a waiterless restaurant, and to my own surprise, I must say: It’s just not that good. As fun as they are, the joy of all these gimmicks quickly fades—but you know what never gets old? Genuine human interaction.

Not even the world’s slickest robot can beat a real human being, who had to get up in the morning, wash themselves, and get dressed, standing in the sun for a brief moment after handing you your meal, leaning back, crossing their arms and holding their elbow with one hand, laughing and saying, “Yes. I remember that. I was there too once. It’s beautiful.” That interaction itself is also beautiful. As my very latest research only seems to confirm, it might, in fact, be irreplaceable—because as it turns out, we have tried—and failed at—establishing waiterless restaurants since the late 1800s. Yes, even before the industrial revolution. That’s how much people hated waiters after the job had first appeared a few decades prior.

As early as 1896, a German engineer developed the “Automat,” a word we use to this day for “vending machine,” and his restaurant worked about the same. The walls were lined with little cabinets containing food items. You just walked up, inserted coins, and the doors opened, presenting you with coffee, sandwiches, and other snacks. For a while, the concept bloomed in the US. From Atlas Obscura:

By 1927, there were 15 Automats in New York City. Around World War II, at the height of the Automat’s popularity, Horn & Hardart had over 80 locations in Philadelphia and New York. They were serving 350,000 customers per day.

How many are they serving today? You can probably guess: zero. The last location closed in 1991. But people keep trying. Eatsa, an innovative food company, opened several Automat-design restaurants across the US from 2016–2017. Two years later, they were all closed for good. Even 130 years later, it seems we are not ready for waiterless restaurants. Maybe we will never be. But at the very least, now I don’t feel so bad about not acting on my idea from way back when. As it turns out, it, too, was just not that good.

It’s okay to move on from most of your “flashes of genius” without blinking an eye. Don’t worry about the things you’ll never do. Chances are, they’re just not that good—and you already know which path you’re meant to walk.

In 17th-century Japan, the ruling samurais of Edo—the capital that would become Tokyo—often instituted a ban on luxury. Sometimes it was an attempt to direct the economy, sometimes it was meant to bully people into better ethics. One rule that followed was that people were to wear only simple clothing.

In The Way of Nagomi, Ken Mogi outlines the common folks’ reaction to this rule: “They went about ordering specially designed clothes that were subdued on the surface but gorgeous inside. […] Thus, those with defiant spirits could wear what appeared to be a simple and modest fabric outside while secretly wearing a gorgeous lining, giving themselves a great morale boost and sense of pride without offending the ruling samurai.” This custom and the philosophy behind it are known as uramasari, which translates to “winning lining.” Winning indeed!

A second rule was that each meal was to consist of only one dish. The people of Okayama had an idea how to best interpret that one, too. They created matsuri sushi. Matsuri means “festival.” In this case, the festival happened in a wooden bucket, into which people stuffed all the usual ingredients of great sushi, such as sashimi, squid, shrimp, eggs, shiitake mushrooms, and so on. Then, they put a layer of rice with vinegar on top, covering everything. What would any suspicious observer see? A bucket full of rice. But turn it upside down onto a large plate inside the safe confines of your house, and…voilà! An amazing sushi platter—but hey, it’s just one dish!

While these are remarkable examples of protecting and exercising your freedom, what struck me most about them is their creativity. Ken Mogi noticed it too: “When there is trouble, in addition to raising your voice directly against it, there might be alternative ways, less obvious or ostentatious but more effective, superficially shy but brave deep down. That is the way of nagomi […], in which one could be creative—in a big way—without being disruptive.”

The people of Okayama and Edo didn’t break the rules—they merely laid them out in their own way. Instead of rebelling against their restrictions, they worked with them and, in the process, created new, brilliant traditions. This defies the Western ideal of the lone genius, who singlehandedly overthrows our worldview with an otherworldly idea. From a Japanese perspective, creativity is “a process of finding an organic blend between what is uniquely oneself and the broader aspects of the wider world.” It’s about mixing assertion and restraint so you may efficiently coexist with everyone and everything else.

Tearing down walls is not the only way to find freedom, and freedom isn’t the only canvas on which creativity can truly blossom. Bend your constraints before you break them. Genius lies in interpreting the rules.

I was all ready and geared up to work. Then, an email from my tax advisor. “You owe the government another 26,000 euros for 2022.” Just like that, my train of thought went off its track. After a few deep breaths and clicking through their documents, I spent the next hour combing through mine. I sent them an email with ideas on where what might have gone wrong, and now it’s almost lunch time.

The shock hasn’t settled, of course. It’ll take time to process. But you know what I’m going to do now? Eat lunch, then continue with the rest of my to-do list as planned—because I’m not a train, and neither are you. When we fall off the wagon, it’s not a catastrophe with casualties. Only a slight bend in the road we couldn’t see coming. So we get back on track and keep driving.

It’s okay to get derailed. Just don’t stay derailed when you can help it.

J. R. R. Tolkien created at least 15 different languages for use in his mythical world of The Lord of the Rings. None of them are completely finished, but many of them have enough grammar to be functional. You can learn Sindarin, Quenya, and even Tengwar, the unique alphabet and scripture of Elvish.

For Tolkien, inventing languages was his passion, so his stories grew out of his languages more so than vice versa. But sometimes, he needed yet another language for those stories to continue to make sense, and when he did, he got to work so he might fill in the gaps.

When’s the last time you invented a language to write a page in your novel? Don’t worry—it’s “never” for me as well. But maybe we should. Maybe we should create an entire wiki around the technology of the company we work for. Maybe we should study the entire history of money to be a better accountant.

When the stakes are the meaning of your life, there’s no such thing as too much detail.

This week, I’ve had three different people rip my writing to shreds. One essentially called a piece I’d spent hundreds of hours on, “meh.” Another said the premise of an article was “stupid.” And the last one wasn’t satisfied with belittling my writing, so he also questioned my integrity and my character for good measure.

Harsh criticism always stings, but when you’ve done your very best? Double-ouch! And for all the emotional endurance it takes just to swallow a critic’s words, that’s not even the hardest part. As a writer, leader, or artist of any kind, your true test is this: What happens after the emotion?

The challenge is not to handle your anger or frustration. You’ll do that anyway. You might do it gracefully or you might do it poorly—but even though it will affect your relationships, in the long run, the feeling is but a blip on your inner radar. What matters is whether you’re able to extract what’s helpful despite your emotions.

When all you want to do is tell someone off, can you still see the good parts in their argument? Can you reflect and take notes? Can you separate what might be their emotions from what’s actually useful feedback?

With enough experience, dismissing criticism is easy. You can let it bounce off your hardened skin without too much thought—and sometimes, for your own wellbeing, you’ll have to do just that. But when you can see past the emotional affronts and look for the next signpost towards better, that’s true maturity.

Stay around after the emotion, and you might find your harshest critics also turn out to be some of your most helpful supporters.