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Other studies indicate that working on several things at once lowers our productivity by at least 60 percent and our IQ by more than ten points.
▪ Don’t look at any kind of screen for the first hour you’re awake and the last hour before you go to sleep. ▪ Turn off your phone before you achieve flow. There is nothing more important than the task you have chosen to do during this time. If this seems too extreme, enable the “do not disturb” function so only the people closest to you can contact you in case of emergency. ▪ Designate one day of the week, perhaps a Saturday or Sunday, a day of technological “fasting,” making exceptions only for e-readers (without Wi-Fi) or MP3 players.
▪ Read and respond to e-mail only once or twice per day. Define those times clearly and stick to them.
▪ Try the Pomodoro Technique: Get yourself a kitchen timer (some are made to look like a pomodoro, or tomato) and commit to working on a single task as long as it’s running. The Pomodoro Technique recommends 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of rest for each cycle, but you can also do 50 minutes of work and 10 minutes of rest. Find the pace that’s best for you; the most important thing is to be disciplined in completing each cycle. ▪ Start your work session with a ritual you enjoy and end it with a reward. ▪ Train your mind to return to the present when you find yourself getting distracted.
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▪ Work in a space where you will not be distracted. If you can’t do this at home,...
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▪ Divide each activity into groups of related tasks, and assign each group its own place and time. For example, if you’re writing a magazine article, you could do research and take notes at home in the morning, write in the library in the afternoon, and edit on the couch at night. ▪ Bundle routine tasks—such as sending out invoices, making phone calls, and so on—and do them all at once.
convenience stores
to take up the mantle.
bristles
glint in her eye
Jobs was fascinated and inspired by the country’s artisans, engineers (especially at Sony), philosophy (especially Zen), and cuisine (especially sushi).7
and attention to detail.
In the documentary, we see one of Jiro’s apprentices learning to make tamago (a thin, slightly sweet omelet). No matter how hard he tries, he can’t get Jiro’s approval. He keeps practicing for years until he finally does. Why does the apprentice refuse to give up? Doesn’t he get bored cooking eggs every day? No, because making sushi is his ikigai, too.
Jiro’s family isn’t looking to make money; instead they value good working conditions and creating an environment in which they can flow while making the best sushi in the world.
When they get down to work, both become one with the object they are creating.
In Miyazaki’s films, forests have personalities, trees have feelings, and robots befriend birds.
putting his ikigai above all else.
If he hadn’t been a physicist, he said, he would have been happy as a musician.
misanthropic or reclusive,
mundane
Meditation generates alpha and theta brain waves. For those experienced in meditation, these waves appear right away, while it might take a half hour for a beginner to experience them. These relaxing brain waves are the ones that are activated right before we fall asleep, as we lie in the sun, or right after taking a hot bath. We all carry a spa with us everywhere we go. It’s just a matter of knowing how to get in—something anyone can do, with a bit of practice.
permeate
Whether this is good or bad for the economy is beyond the scope of this book.
After reading this chapter you should have a better idea of which activities in your life make you enter flow. Write all of them on a piece of paper, then ask yourself these questions: What do the activities that drive you to flow have in common? Why do those activities drive you to flow? For example, are all the activities you most like doing ones that you practice alone or with other people? Do you flow more when doing things that require you to move your body or just to think?
“I’ve never eaten meat in my life.”
eating only two meals per day and working for as many years as he could. “Your mind and your body. You keep both busy,” he said on his 112th birthday, “you’ll be here a long time.” Back then, he was still exercising every day.
parapsychologist
his One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji:6
Osamu Tezuka, the father of modern Japanese manga, shared this feeling. Before he died in 1989, his last words as he drew one final cartoon were “Please, just let me work!”9
Never Stop Learning
honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.
wags
“You stay in your time. You don’t go backward. I think if you relate to the time you’re in, you keep your eyes and ears open, read the paper, see what’s going on, stay curious about everything, you will automatically be in your time.”
The sense of community, and the fact that Japanese people make an effort to stay active until the very end, are key elements of their secret to long life. If you want to stay busy even when there’s no need to work, there has to be an ikigai on your horizon, a purpose that guides you throughout your life and pushes you to make things of beauty and utility for the community and yourself.
“food is the least important thing.”
And to keep your heart young—don’t let it grow old. Open your heart to people with a nice smile on your face. If you smile and open your heart, your grandchildren and everyone else will want to see you.” “The best way to avoid anxiety is to go out in the street and say hello to people. I do it every day. I go out there and say, ‘Hello!’ and ‘See you later!’ Then I go home and care for my vegetable garden. In the afternoon, I spend time with friends.”
“Here, everyone gets along. We try not to cause problems. Spending time together and having fun is the only thing that matters.”
“I feel joy every morning waking up at six and opening the curtains to look out at my garden, where I grow my own vegetables. I go right outside to check on my tomatoes, my mandarin oranges … I love the sight of them—it relaxes me. After an hour in the garden I go back inside and make breakfast.” “I plant my own vegetables and cook them myself. That’s my ikigai.”
“When I wake up, I go to the butsudan and light incense. You have to keep your ancestors in mind. It’s the first thing I do every morning.”
my taiso exercises
I give thanks for it every day.”
▪ One hundred percent of the people we interviewed keep a vegetable garden, and most of them also have fields of tea, mangoes, shikuwasa, and so on. ▪ All belong to some form of neighborhood association, where they feel cared for as though by family. ▪ They celebrate all the time, even little things. Music, song, and dance are essential parts of daily life. ▪ They have an important purpose in life, or several. They have an ikigai, but they don’t take it too seriously. They are relaxed and enjoy all that they do.
They are very proud of their traditions and local culture. ▪ They are passionate about everything they do, however insignificant it might seem. ▪ Locals have a strong sense of yuimaaru—recognizing the connection between people. They help each other with everything from work in the fields (harvesting sugarcane or planting rice) to building houses
Experts point out that, for one thing, Okinawa is the only province in Japan without trains. Its residents have to walk or cycle when not driving. It is also the only province that has managed to follow the Japanese government’s recommendation of eating less than ten grams of salt per day.
▪ Locals eat a wide variety of foods, especially vegetables. Variety seems to be key. A study of Okinawa’s centenarians showed that they ate 206 different foods, including spices, on a regular basis. They ate an average of eighteen different foods each day, a striking contrast to the nutritional poverty of our fast-food culture.
“eating the rainbow.”
▪ They also eat practically half as much salt as the rest of Japan: 7 grams per day, compared to an average of 12. ▪ They consume fewer calories: an average of 1,785 per day, compared to 2,068 in the rest of Japan. In fact, low caloric intake is common among the five Blue Zones.
one with rice, another with vegetables, a bowl of miso soup, and something to snack on.
benefit of calorie restriction is that it reduces levels of IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) in the body. IGF-1 is a protein that plays a significant role in the aging process; it seems that one of the reasons humans and animals age is an excess of this protein in their blood.2 Whether calorie restriction will extend lifespan in humans is not yet known, but data increasingly indicate that moderate calorie restriction with adequate nutrition has a powerful protective effect against obesity, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease and reduces metabolic risk
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