Doing the Work
I’ve learned many things about myself as I’ve trained Karate-do and studied its philosophies. One of my favorite principles comes from the discipline of regular practice. The Japanese concept of kaizen — continuous improvement — tells us that we don’t have to rely on “aha” moments to make progress. We just have to show up and keep doing the work.
Writers are often advised to write at least 500 words a day. If they keep at it, in a month they will have 15,000 words. In a year, that’s over 180,000 words. For context, a typical novel is around 60,000-100,000 words. Put another way: don’t wait for inspiration to strike — just do the work, and keep putting one word after another.
Another mathematical illustration shows us that just a 1% improvement, compounded over 365 days, generates a more than 37-fold improvement over the course of one year. (1.01365 = 37.78 if you’re checking my work.) Putting in a consistent amount of work, steadily over the course of many days, weeks, and months, adds up in significant ways.
A classic fable from art classes is one where the ceramics professor split the class in two: one half was directed to make one perfect bowl by the end of the term; the other half was directed to make as many bowls as possible by the end of the term. The perfectionist side of the classroom spent weeks designing and planning and fretting over how to make a bowl “perfect.” The quantity side of the classroom got their hands dirty and got familiar with the clay, and they cranked out bowl after bowl. Cutting to the chase, the bowls that the perfectionists ended up making were not nearly as good at the ones made by the quantity team. Getting out of their heads and into the studio to do the work was a more effective path.
When I was in graduate school for art, I made a one-minute, 12-frames-per-second, hand-drawn animation. Doing the math again, that’s over 700 drawings for a one-minute short film. Through that process, I learned that not every attempt was going to be perfect, and I couldn’t be precious about each mark I was making on the paper. Sometimes a drawing was a little “off”, but there wasn’t time to dwell on it – I still had a few hundred more drawings to make. In the end, I finished the film, and I loved the result — but not as much as I loved the time at the drawing board, making each still image. And not as much as I appreciated the lessons I’ve taken away from that experience, the big one being that persistence and discipline and always moving forward is a more effective strategy for improvement than perfectionism.
In our recommended reading, we see reminders from Master Ueshiro to practice at least 10 kata per day to keep our Karate strong. Or from Gichin Funakoshi in his Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate, he asserts, “Karate is like boiling water: if you do not heat it constantly, it will return to its tepid state.” To simply quote Hanshi’s mantra: “Keep training!”
When I internalize all of this, it brings me a sense of peace. I don’t have to conquer everything all at once. That’s too steep of climb. Instead, I can focus on the joy of the process (“The ecstasy of sweating in hard work” — Master Nagamine!), and know that in time I will see the improvements. And I’ve seen the improvements — in myself and in others — on the deck for Karate, or wherever else we are doing the work.
