A Samurai’s Anti-Life Hack For Developing Enduring Skill
Seneca, a popstar, and The Beatles teach us to invest, not save time
“A thousand days of training to develop, ten thousand days of training to polish.”
Miyamoto Musashi, “A Book Of Five Rings”
I think electricity has eternally spoiled us. Think of this little piece of your day which goes relatively unnoticed: you flick a switch, and you have light. In days past, our ancestors would have needed to prepare a fire or at least a lamp for illumination. However, we get this wonder with as little effort as flicking a switch.
The ease of this operation may not catch our attention, but it does pollute our expectations — of everything. In the same nature of the light switch, we have a desire for quick life-hacks. We need our two-minute elevator pitch, our six-minute abs, and our sixty-second rice. While the quick rice likely won’t harm us, the life hacks leave us lacking. Our effort to save time, like flipping the light switch, deprives us of the life skill of investing time.
In the 1600’s the famed samurai and author Miyamoto Musashi understood this. In his scholarly article “Reflections on a Katana — The Japanese Pursuit of Performative Mastery,” Professor Agurruza explains although Musashi was famous by the…
