The Sushi Chef’s Guide to Mastering Any Skill
A sushi master’s quest for perfection reveals what it takes for our brains to do something well.
It might be the soaring notes of Beethoven’s 7th when a steel blade slides effortlessly into prime, pink-fleshed salmon. Or the startling cinematic appeal of glistening, freshly-made sushi being solemnly placed onto obsidian serving platters. Either way, the acclaimed documentary ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’ is methodically crafted to conjure up many emotions — among them, a respect for those who persist in the endless pursuit of perfection.
The documentary follows the life of Jiro Ono, now aged 91, the first ever itamae (sushi chef) to attain three Michelin stars. His restaurant, a tiny ten-seater and frequent celebrity haunt, is tucked away in the basement of the Ginza subway station. When it comes to serving twenty-course meals (each course a single piece of sushi) at a hefty US$300 a head, details are king: the size and placement of the sushi changes depending on the patron’s preferences, including whether they are right or left-handed.
In one scene, Jiro — who began working in a restaurant at age 7 — explains the philosophy underpinning his indomitable approach to making sushi:
The way of the shokunin is to repeat the same thing every day.
Shokunin try to get the highest quality fish and apply their technique to it. 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… I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is.
‘Shokunin’, a Japanese word that very roughly translates into ‘artisan’, describes a tenacious dedication to mastering a skill or profession.
Much scientific inquiry has been devoted to this subject, from exploring why drawing abilities span from inscrutable stick figures to celebrated MoMA works, to why some people pick up languages better than others. A lot of this research asks similar core questions: Why do certain people become extremely good at what they do, and are there things the rest of us mortals can do to emulate them?
One of the seminal findings of modern science is neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to change and respond to new stimuli throughout our lifetimes. It explains why ‘practice makes perfect’; repetition of a skill can effectively rewire the brain to make us more effective at what we do.
To understand how this rewiring works, we need to untangle a bit of jargon. Neurons are the building blocks of the nervous system, which includes the brain. A neuron is made up of three basic parts: the dendrites, the cell body and the axon.
Performing a skill requires activation of different parts of the brain, which in turn requires neurons to communicate with each other. They do so by releasing a combination of electrical and chemical signals. Dendrites pick up these signals and send them onto the cell body and the axon. The information then travels down the axon as an electrical impulse called an action potential. The axon then transmits the information across to the dendrites of other neurons.
Practice helps the brain speed up this process through what’s called myelination.
Myelin is a fatty tissue that covers and protects the axons, kind of like the plastic covering on electrical wires. This is known as the myelin sheath. Myelination — the process by which the myelin sheath develops — greatly increases the speed and strength at which neurons can send signals to each other.
While most myelination happens when we’re young, it’s been found that repetitive practice of a particular skill helps thicken the myelin sheath of those particular neural pathways. More myelin significantly improves our ability to carry out actions that rely on finger motor skills, visual and auditory processing centers, and other cognitive functions.
Knowing that practice makes perfect is one thing, but actually doing it is another. Unlike Jiro Ono, not all of us are naturally inclined to lock ourselves away for hours on end, repeating the same skill over and over, year after year.
Enter the science of motivation.
Studies on how we can better motivate ourselves to learn and practice new skills fill an entire library, but a quick sweep of the literature shows that it’s possible to create conditions under which practice isn’t all drudgery and drag:
- Subtly varying training exercises can keep the brain more active throughout the learning process, drastically reducing the time it takes to pick up a skill;
- You’re more likely to stay motivated if you’re given the choice to practice something rather than forced to do it, and if you actively reflect on its value to your life;
- By working in sophisticated reward and feedback systems, tools like gamification go a long way to spark a learner’s passion and enthusiasm for whatever skill it is they’re trying to master.
For most of us, it’s not just the quantity of practice that matters, but equally (or more) important is the quality of that practice. While natural talents and dispositions certainly play a role in determining how easily a skill comes to us, the weight of science throws open the exciting possibility that under the right circumstances, our brains are capable of developing abilities in ways previously unknown.
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Cogniss Magazine is published by Cogniss, a platform for building Human Transformation apps — apps that use applied neuroscience and psychology to drive better learning, health and behavior change outcomes.
