Life – Shin Adachi

the choice to be mediocre

Some wise musician once told me that only mediocre players are picky about their musical instruments. If you are a bad player, then it doesn’t matter how good of an instrument you play on. The music will not sound good anyway. If you’re a good player, then it also doesn’t matter how bad of an instrument you play on, since you will figure out a way to make beautiful music with it anyway (like what Keith Jarrett did in Köln in 1975). However if you’re somewhere in the middle, you could fool yourself in thinking that you’re good by playing on a great instrument. It may occasionally produce decent music despite your lack of skills.

A little over a year ago, I came out of my sabbatical and started working with high school students at an independent school in Silicon Valley (yes I’m back on the west coast!). Getting to know more young people has been a really great transition for me and has given me a renewed sense of hope for the future.

I am concerned, however, at the general culture of the current times, and what some of these kids are told as “advice” by peers and adults who know no better. For example, there is a tremendous number of time-wasting tasks that they are forced to go through just to optimize the college admissions game. To spend so much time on this game is incredibly inefficient, since most undergraduate programs will teach very similar things anyway. The name of the college, it seems to me, are very similar in effect to musical instruments. If you remain bad at what you do, then nobody will want to hire you, so what college you attended won’t matter. On the other hand, if you dedicate enough time to become good at something, then your work will speak for itself and you’ll have plenty of opportunities as people realize the value you will bring, so the college you attended won’t matter either. So the signaling that comes from the name of the college on your resume, if it makes any difference at all, only matters if you’re mediocre. By telling kids to care about such pointless things as the name of the college they attend, we are basically telling them, “We have very low expectations of you that you won’t amount to much, so you will need to go to a famous school in order to make people believe that you’re better than you actually are.” What an uninspiring and stupid message that will for sure kill the intrinsic motivation these kids all have.

The tragedy in all this is that by focusing on this admissions game, we are intentionally choosing to stay mediocre. Or at least we are optimizing our life with the assumption that we will stay mediocre. With this mindset, we’re guaranteed to stay mediocre, because our daily actions are not aligned with true growth. I don’t necessarily think that is a bad choice if you’ve intentionally chosen it and are content with it, but a lot of people are funneled into this mediocrity mindset without realizing that there are other options. Developing yourself is a time-consuming process; you must choose to do it, and do it on a daily basis. Because time is finite, you will most likely have to give up some other things for this, but trust me, the tradeoff is well worth it.

2020

What a year. I remember it starting out like any other year, but boy how quickly can things change.

Personally, it has been a year of many changes.

I got married and moved to the east coast. As the pandemic hit and the music gigs mostly gone, I shifted focus to teaching and engineering. At last count I taught over 180 students this year, and I have been developing code for a music technology start-up for the last few months.

Having a wedding in the midst of a pandemic was quite the experience. It was never our plan to have a big wedding, but with the borders of many countries closed, even some of our closest family members did not make it to the wedding. Notably, our parents were missing in action with the exception of my mother who got around the restrictions and managed to travel back and forth from her home in Kumamoto, Japan.

Speaking of weddings, did you know that the typical wedding in the US costs somewhere on the order of $20 to 30k nowadays? Well that is just completely nuts. If it’s common belief that a newlywed couple just about to start a family together should spend such a gigantic sum of money on a frivolous party as the first step in their marriage, our culture needs a serious reevaluation of what matters in life.

With the prevalence of social media, it can seem like every one of your friends is throwing fancy parties and going on vacations all the time. But before you join them on the miserable treadmill of keeping up with the Joneses, take a minute to consider what you’ll be giving up to live that life. For starters, try asking one of these friends, “so, are you really excited to go back into the office after your vacation?”. The sad truth is that a lot of people aren’t, yet they have no choice. Such misery could have been easily avoided only if people realized that the reason they have to work a job they don’t enjoy is because of their financial irresponsibility. If you had enough saved up to be able to simply say “fuck you” to anything that goes against your principles, many more doors that you didn’t even know existed will open up in your life. When you’re not having to do everything for the money, your work is more fun, and your life is more authentic.

Thankfully, nobody in our close circles has such misplaced values, so we were able to have a ceremony that was tiny, intimate, and very special. It sort of became a fun family project to put together, and every participant ended up helping out in some way.

Peera walked Pi down the aisle.
Satoko played the piano.
Yuki and Mike made the flower bouquets.
Kan broadcast the ceremony for families back home, and Rito helped tear down the equipment by carrying the tripod for a few feet. A major contribution considering his age.
Minae baked the most beautiful cake after 3 practice attempts at home and happy neighbors who got free cake.

After the ceremony, we had some delicious Thai take-out from a local restaurant.

We are so grateful for our families, and our marriage is off to a great start. I’m surprised at myself for saying this considering that I had no desire to get married just a few years ago, but if you are unsure whether marriage is right for you, I highly recommend that you think about it seriously. There is something very special about committing to share the rest of your life together with a partner who knows you all too well (even your flaws), through both good times and bad. Nothing in my life up to this point has given me the level of fulfillment I get from striving to be a better husband.

As far as the east coast life goes, I’m actually enjoying the crunchy leaves and the piles of snow in New Jersey. We are just an hour away from New York City, so if you are ever in the area, please hit us up.

May your 2021 be a year of purpose.

Ronald James Read

I just read a Wikipedia entry about this guy named Ronald Read. It’s rare that a Wikipedia entry inspires me, in fact, I think it’s a first in my life. Just read this opening sentence:

Ronald James Read (October 23, 1921 – June 2, 2014) was an American philanthropist, investor, janitor, and gas station attendant.

That alone carries so much weight. What a powerful statement about what is possible in life.

Here’s the rest, read on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Read_(philanthropist)

This guy walked or hitch-hiked over 4 miles to attend high school. He served his country. He didn’t go to college, but never stopped learning. He chose his investments by reading the Wall Street Journal every day. He didn’t make excuses about his modest earnings. He used safety-pins to hold together his old pants and kept wearing them. He made something of his life, a rather big something. He surprised everyone when he donated millions of dollars to his local hospital and library.

Why the story of Ronald Read touched me today likely has something to do with what’s happening around the world nowadays. In particular, I’m having a real hard time relating to the activists in the US. At least the activists in Hong Kong and Thailand are fighting some real big issues.

But “systemic” racism, in America of all places? Coming from Japan where I witnessed significantly more racist attitudes than I ever have in the US, it baffles me to hear Americans who have never lived in a different country speak of racism as if that is what’s preventing people from living a fulfilling life. Particularly despicable are those who resort to violence in their protest against racism, destroying properties of many who did no wrong.

If you are living in the United States of America in 2020 and somehow think that you are “oppressed” because of your skin color, that is delusion of the highest order. In fact, you are living in the best time and in the best place to have ever existed in the history of our species. You have basically won the cosmic lottery. Any sane person who has done the research on some basic facts would whole-heartedly disagree with your claim that the system here is broken. No other system in history has ever allowed so many people of ordinary upbringing and of all races to make such great lives for themselves.

When it comes to racism, America in 2020 is the least racist country to ever exist on the face of our planet. Sure there are racist people here as there are anywhere else, but how does one seriously claim that this is a systematically racist country? Compared to what other country?

As a teacher, it worries me that the prevailing philosophy of the day is that our system is broken. If this is what we are teaching our children, they are screwed. A victim mentality will never catapult them to live an honorable life of responsibility.

I have a few words of advice to anyone drawn toward the flavor of activism prevalent in the US today. Before you try to discard the system and reorganize the world, learn a lesson or two from Ronald Read. Stop trying to appear virtuous on your social media feeds, and try actually living a virtuous life. Work hard. Gain new skills. Contribute to the world with your labor and talents. Get to know people of all walks of life and learn what real issues they are facing. Make something of your life. Be an example to the youth. Then you’ll discover the wonderful society we are all so lucky to inhabit. You might even find the meaning of life.

job vs calling

What is a “job”?
Your job is the task with which you earn, at the bare minimum, the financial resources to pay for life’s basic necessities. You need to have a job, either now or in the near future, unless you are financially set for the rest of your life.

You don’t necessarily have to love your job. In other words, your “job” does not have to be your “calling” (see below).

What is a “calling”?
Your calling is the task that makes you feel alive. It is your source of pride, purpose, and meaning. A calling makes your life beautiful.

Your calling does not have to earn you money. In other words, your “calling” does not have to be your “job” (see above).

Putting the two together
I have been lucky to have many jobs in my life that I’ve also considered my calling. I have only accepted job offers to work on projects that excited me, and whenever I had the urge to shift to a new calling, I would simply leave my job to commit more of my time on a new calling. Often, my new calling ended up turning into a job after some time anyway, as people start paying for my work.

what to do in a changing world

Back when I was a software engineer at Google, Vint Cerf came by our office to give a talk about the future of the internet. Before you ask me “who that?”, let me tell you. It is a safe bet that, unbeknownst to you, your life was significantly affected by this man. His invention of the TCP, a reliable protocol that defines how data is sent from one node to another on the internet, has undoubtedly changed the way you live. That is so because a reliable internet has changed the fabric of society and continues to do so.

Today, most people take for granted the existence of the internet and how well it works. But let us remind ourselves that the technology is very new. Just the fact that Cerf, or “The Father of the Internet”, is still alive is a reminder of the massive change that our world has gone through in a single generation. The internet is so new that I didn’t even know of its existence for the first ten years of my life, and I didn’t even consider to study about it when I was choosing my college major. At the time, I hadn’t yet realized that it was an important topic to be knowledgeable about. Heck the internet is so new that I haven’t installed internet in my home yet! But I’m told that I’m one of the last people to do so in this country. Despite its newness, the societal forces of my post-college years pushed me toward learning about it and working with it, and little did I know, I ended up making a career out of it.

I was thinking about this quickly-changing society the other day when my fiancée, a computer science researcher, was explaining to me the Lamport timestamp algorithm by Leslie Lamport. It is a fascinating algorithm to say the least, but what hit me more is the fact that he is still alive. It turns out that Lamport, like Cerf, is another person who has affected all of our lives even if we don’t know it.

The systems that lie at the heart of the internet services we use today are “distributed”, meaning that they are made up of many components that exist in different places (and often in different continents) that behave as one system, and such a system must somehow order the events happening at different places at different times within the system.

A distributed system is required because you simply cannot have one server taking all requests and one server storing all the data. A modern system handles an incredible amount of data (think about photos on Instagram or videos on YouTube you interact with daily, but multiplied by the number of global users) moving from one place to another, and it is simply impossible to store all that in a single database or to take in requests for the data from millions of users simultaneously with a single server. Even if there were a server big enough to do that, a single server represents a single point of failure and a failure is unacceptable considering that these systems hold most of our financial assets among other things.

Delving into the technical details of the inner-workings of specific services we use today is not the purpose of my post today, but just to touch the surface of the challenges of implementing a distributed system, consider that the laws of nature, or more specifically, the limitation in the speed of light, forbids the components of a distributed system from synchronizing their clocks. Still, for the system to work, it must somehow order the events occurring in various components. Lamport’s algorithm is the building block with which a system accomplishes this ordering.

The fact that Lamport is still alive reminded me of the pace of change in the world that we are seeing today. Such fast changes have never been experienced by past human societies. This is the fastest we have ever moved as a species, so let’s take a moment to appreciate that. The world in 2020 is significantly different from what it was in 2010, the year I finished college. The fact that I have worked for eight different employers since is a testament to that, and I’m not even including all the freelance jobs I do now in music and teaching. This pace is a miracle if seen from a historical perspective considering that the vast majority of human history went like this: “Be born, die a few decades later, and the way the world works has not changed at all from the day of your birth to the day of your death.” Only recently does such a story not hold true anymore. And nobody even knows what 2030 will be like.

When I told a student of mine, who had just entered high school, that there is a high chance that he will be working a job that doesn’t exist yet, he asked me, “what should I be studying?” My honest answer to him was, “it doesn’t matter”.

In all honesty, your field of study does not matter all that much. Whatever specific domain knowledge you gain for a career that exists today will be outdated in 10 years, other than the fundamentals like reading and mathematics (so yes, be strong in those at the very least).

More importantly, whatever you are doing now, do it extremely well. This applies to everybody. I don’t care if you are a student, a parent, a barista, a surgeon, or a chief economist of a central bank of a country. Do your job well. If you don’t want to and you absolutely cannot get yourself to put in the work, don’t be afraid to switch fields. Pick something that you are at least driven to be good, and actually become good. I mean this advice seriously, and I mean it to be applied even for hobbies and recreational activities. Whether you are gardening, making YouTube videos, or playing the guitar, do them well. Because to do anything well requires that you build up your foundation, and that foundation will undoubtedly spring forward you in your future endeavors, whatever those foundations and endeavors happen to be in. You may not see the connections now, but you sure will in the future, looking back. Also, by doing things well, you will develop the inherent confidence that you can accomplish things, because you will have gone through the process of self-improvement already.

This importance of having that kind of confidence cannot be emphasized enough. When life throws a curveball at you and you must adjust course, the first step is acknowledging that you can indeed do so. Many self-help books like to claim that you can develop confidence in a matter of hours, and claiming as such must be helping with their book sales, but that is a flawed and deceptive message. True confidence takes time. It only comes when you actually are good. So become good.

As society gets more complex, the number of ways in which a person can live a productive life has increased as well. It is a natural byproduct of a trade-based economy in which we trade our skills for everything else we need in life, those other things being produced by other people with skills that you don’t have. Today, there are as many ways to live a fulfilling life as there are people on the planet.

For me, when I look back at my life so far, the foundational knowledge I have built up in mathematics and physics has been helpful. Because knowledge is most efficiently built up like a pyramid from the bottom up, shifting gears to a diverse array of possibilities is easier with a stronger foundation. For example, some of my recent pursuits in fields such as economics and artificial neural networks have been significantly accelerated because I had studied calculus extensively in the past. I would have never imagined this when I was doing calculus. Even though I applied calculus for years to the field of Newtonian mechanics, I had no idea that it could be applied to so many other things. I doubt that Newton, the inventor of calculus, knew either.

Another skill that does not get talked about often is the “confidence to learn difficult things.” Maybe that doesn’t really count as a skill, but it sure matters. So many people, when faced with a challenge, give up because they feel that they do not have what it takes to learn, and settle for what is, even when they know that they are not satisfied in their current situations. That’s really too bad, because we actually all have the power to change ourselves and our situations if it weren’t for our self-limiting beliefs. Sure it may take you more work than another person because of factors like your lack of experiences or innate abilities, but the words “hard” and “impossible” are not to be confused. They do not overlap.

It is certain that the world will continue to change, and you may need to adjust by learning new things. It it hasn’t hit you yet, expect that it will soon. A natural question is then, how do you develop the confidence that you can learn? Again, there is no one right answer here. For me, much of my confidence comes from music, the one constant in my life. Music’s purpose is in its beauty, but there are also positive side effects of having devoted my life to music that I didn’t even imagine while putting in the hours of practice day in and day out. I simply wanted to make good music, but music has taught me much more than how to make music. The side effects are too many to mention here, but they basically boil down to the fact that music is extremely difficult to do well. As such, any other challenge that come up in my life all just seem so easy to me in comparison. I don’t even think twice about whether or not I will be able to overcome it.

If you find yourself asking “Can I do this?”, that’s a silly question. It’s not even worth discussing. Of course you can.

Looking back

Music has been a major part of my life, starting early on. My mother’s diary speaks of the day when the 26-week-old me discovered that a piano responds to my touch to make a sound. By age two, I was able to sing over fifty Japanese songs with precise intonation.

I must have decided early on, although not consciously, that it was okay to not be the best at everything, if it meant that I could play more music. Of course I wasn’t thinking that deeply about my life, but now I realize this about my past self, because whenever I got a time-consuming assignment or a project from school, I tended to not do them, opting to practice with my time instead. Of course I tried to make sure that my grades did not dip so low to a point to fail the class, but I was not always successful.

One evening after I came home with a failing report card, I was trying to sleep when I overheard my parents discussing in the dining area. The topic was whether I should stop playing music so that I can focus on my studies more. Thankfully, they decided against that idea. My father’s precise words were, “But if we take away music from Shin, he would have nothing left.” I think he underestimated me a bit though, as I have achieved some things outside of music too. I was just a late bloomer on most of my pursuits in life.

When I got in trouble with my mother, unlike most mothers who would take away their video games or a day out with friends, she took away my ride to music lessons. That did not deter me, and I simply walked. My cello teacher’s house was a 1.5-hour walk each way, and so I walked from and to the lesson, with a cello on my back.

When I was in high school, my father left his job to pursue more education. My parents said that they were financially okay to continue paying for our living expenses, but the music lessons had to go. That’s when I decided to take the only job I knew how to get at that time, a minimum wage job washing dishes in a restaurant in the evenings and weekends, and used almost all of my earnings from the job to continue with the lessons. Surprisingly, this was a change for the better (take note, parents). Did you know that people value things much more when they have to pay for it? I never knew until then, but from that day forward, I have never hesitated spending money for my education. I even asked my piano teacher to charge me more so I would take my studies more seriously.

When it came time to decide on a college major, I considered studying music for a bit, but the practical side of me won out and I chose physics instead, and I eventually changed to an even more practical major in engineering. Little did I know that the lessons I learned through music would propel me in all these pursuits.

Looking back, I still don’t know why music has always been such a large part of my life, but in hindsight, I do realize what a positive force it has been in all aspects. I attribute so much of the beauty of life: my happiness, a meaningful and challenging career that I’ve been lucky to have, relationships with other growth-oriented people, and the insights to make good decisions. Here are some key takeaways:

I couldn’t bullshit my way through music.
In an academic environment, I can have the illusion of having mastered something. For example, if I do everything that a teacher tells me to do, I can expect to receive an “A” in a course and I would think that I have mastered it. But in reality, getting an A is hardly “mastering” that subject, as plenty of students get A’s, unlike in the real world where only a few are called “masters” of any field. Compare that to music. Music is very honest, and less confusing. The music that comes out when I sit down at the piano and improvise is a very real reflection of the work that I put in, and my limitations because of the work that I did not put in yet. I doubt that I will ever get to call myself a “master” of music. As such, just sitting down in front of a piano daily aligns my goals to my long-term growth. It’s the small things that matter. The daily decisions to act in ways that improve the unseen future, that’s what most of life boils down to.

Music taught me about “abstraction”.
Some people are puzzled why pianists can memorize a long piece of music, such as a 3-movement sonata. If you think just in terms of the number of notes, it should be impossible that any human can just memorize so much information. But music is not about memorizing notes. It is about how the notes are combined with other notes, and how that combination of notes moves to the next combination of notes. All of those follow a few common patterns that appear in lots of different places within all genres of music. These common patterns are the “abstractions” of music, and by having the knowledge about more and more of these abstractions, what I am able to create musically has increased exponentially over time.

I later learned that my other pursuits in life, such as physics and engineering, are also largely built on this concept of abstraction. So a difficult problem is actually not a complex problem. It is a combination of many simple problems that add up to give it its seemingly complex nature.

Something I’ve noticed about my philosophy in life is that unlike many people who tend to focus on the end-goals and results, I don’t have long-term goals, nor am I interested in what the final result of my actions will be. Kind of like a good poker player, who can detach the aspect of decision making from the result of their actions which are driven by luck. I have never had typical aspirations in life such as getting married, buying a nice house, or being successful. If they happen, great. If not, also great. My focus has simply been on building up my skills from the foundation up, like a pyramid, and I just let life unfold. As a result, I get off to slower start compared to others, but I eventually get to a point where my foundation is strong so that I can learn things faster. That explains my struggles in math classes early on, and my eventual success in physics and engineering. It also explains I was never the kid to enter piano competitions. What I could play was extremely basic compared to other kids taking piano lessons. Instead of learning to play impressive-sounding pieces by these genius composers, I was slowly building up my ear for music by listening to songs and learning them by ear, note by note and chord by chord.

The result is that now I can hear a piece of music and learn and understand both the melody and its chord progressions in a matter of minutes. I can join a band and come up with a piano part on the spot to make the band better. I can compose a piece of music at will. I can accompany a singer singing in any key without sheet music. I can improvise my way out when I get lost during a performance. It turns out that all these skills are important to a musician.

Abraham Lincoln apparently believed in this “foundations-up” approach too, as he said “give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Music is more science than art
Although music is so powerful in appealing to the listener’s emotions, the process of becoming better at music is very scientific in nature, and has so much to do with planning effective practice sessions and executing on them. To detach the emotional part and focusing on the science almost seem wrong, and I even remember being told by a non-musician friend that I should “feel” the music more while I was drilling on a left-hand passage methodically with a metronome, but such practice can be a very effective way to develop the techniques so that later on when you are feeling that emotion in music, you have the capability to express that emotion by moving your hand in a very specific way that matches what the emotions require.

But music is still art
After all I said in the previous paragraph, the purpose of music is still to capture the beauty in the moment in time and space with your music. Music’s power is in its fleeting nature, as no same sound will ever be produced again. As such, music parallels life, because after all, there is so much joy in being alive and experiencing each current moment. It’s a tragedy that we forget this, and life goes on without us basking in the beauty of it.

Yesterday does not exist anymore, and tomorrow is not guaranteed. Today is different though. Today, we can choose what to make of it.

cup of coffee anyone?

There once was a peculiar coffee shop called “Akaneya”, located by the train station in Karuizawa where their baseline coffee started at double the price of a typical coffee at other cafes. Not only that, Akaneya’s secret menu is rumored to have included a cup of coffee that costs upward of $100.

Karuizawa is a rural little town that my family used to visit during the summer to get away from the Tokyo heat. You may also know it as the home of a recent season of the reality show “Terrace House” on Netflix, which has created a very interesting cultural phenomenon with viewers worldwide. The show claims to simply follow some Japanese young adults go about their lives, with no scripts.

Back to coffee. What’s really interesting about Akaneya’s coffee is in its philosophy and history. The first Akaneya opened its doors in Kobe, a large city in west Japan. Its owner, Mr. Funakoshi, had suffered from medical issues throughout his life and reasoned that he could not work a normal day job like everyone else. About all he could handle was to own a small coffee shop, and not only that, his goal was to work as half as much as a typical coffee shop owner. What interesting aspirations! Can you imagine going into any job and right off the bat claim “my goal is to work as half as much as others”? Well that was precisely his goal.

He got to thinking how he can achieve this. He set a goal to serve about fifty or so customers in a day. He figured that the coffee must be priced high to not attract too many customers, but he had some pride. He wouldn’t allow himself to serve anything whose quality didn’t justify its high price. A coffee that tastes bad but is expensive just for expensive’s sake was of no interest to him. And so began his journey to figure out what exactly makes one fine cup of coffee.

His first stops on the journey were the various operators that import and process coffee beans. He carefully observed how they work, and asked them questions until he was confident in his understanding of how this industry operated and the important concepts that end up affecting the taste of the final product, the brewed coffee.

This was 1966 and as such times were different. Of all the coffee bean processors in Japan, there was only one that roasted the beans using charcoal. He decided to buy the beans from them. But instead of letting this operator blend the beans as they saw fit like any other coffee shop would, he brought back a variety of beans in order to decide on a blend himself after much trial and error. He made each cup of coffee to order using the pour over technique, which was eventually made popular in other coffee shops in Japan (and later in other countries as well), but putting in so much work into each cup was certainly not the norm at the time, as no other coffee shop was known for doing the same.

His meticulous research did not stop at the coffee itself. For the best drinking experience, he also needed to find the right cup. He looked into cups made domestically and internationally, made from a variety of materials, and eventually found cups to his liking in Okura Touen, a Japanese producer of fine artistic china, after visiting various factories and observing the pride that each put into their work, as well as the conditions, cleanliness, and management of the factories.

With all this research and preparation, he opened his first coffee shop in Kobe, Japan, and it did better than he expected, which meant he was working more than he would have liked. Remember, his goal was to open a coffee shop that did not attract many customers. Eventually he left the operations of this busy shop to others, and opened up another location in the rural Karuizawa where the population is small and people would typically only visit during the summer months. This store was more to his liking, and he was working less, just like he wanted to. He spent his newfound free time learning about various things, and unexpectedly, the second floor of the shop eventually became a secret meeting place where various important officials and higher-ups of society would come and talk to Mr. Funakoshi for inspiration, to learn from his profound insights about business and the world.

So goes the interesting story of the Akaneya coffee shop and its founder, Mr. Funakoshi. What’s the point you say? Well, whatever lesson you learn from this is up to you. At the very least, it’s a fascinating story of the irony of life, about a guy who ended up successful because he didn’t want to work. Perhaps herein lies an important aspect of work: be creating something that you can be proud of.

retirement

It has been four months since I left my day job. I came to a decision to retire after sifting through a variety of financial advice out there and most of them seemed to state that, based on my net worth and average spending, there wasn’t much of a reason for me to limit what I do on a daily basis based on financial reasons, and I’ve been wanting to pursue some things that I could not make enough time for due to the demands of having a full time job. Today’s post is a little update on how my life is going four months into retirement.

I actually got busier after retiring.
My main motivation to retire was to make time for more music, and I figured that if I didn’t have my day job, the hours I spent on coding would be replaced by music, and I’ll be happier. I am happier indeed, but ironically, it’s not because of less coding and more music. In fact I am still coding quite a bit everyday for fun. Retirement has helped me realize that I actually still like coding a lot. The difference now is that I code with purpose and energy because I intentionally choose the projects. My typical day starts with intense music practice in the morning, then a few hours of coding, then a conversation with my partner, then a music gig or a few more hours of practice in the evening to end the day. All in all, I am doing much more than I was while working, because I am motivated. So ironically, retirement has made me busier.

I still make money.
A retirement police, if there was such a thing, might accuse me of not really retiring, because I am still working quite a bit, and making more money than I spend. It turns out that even when you leave your job, if you are intentional about continuing to invest your time into your skills, you end up gaining a skill set for which people will pay you money. I have music gigs on a regular basis now. How awesome that people are paying me money to do something I would happily do for free.

Should you quit your job too to pursue art?
Something that I get asked is whether they (or someone they know) should quit their jobs too. One litmus test that helped me come to my decision was to ask myself this question, “Am I excited to do what I’m about to do today?” and when the answer was “no” for many days in a row, that was a good sign that my job was no longer consistent with my deeply held values of who I want to be and what contributions I want to make to this world.

Whenever we are about to make a change in our lives, we automatically think about all the downsides, like:
“What if I can’t find another job and go broke?”
“What if I end up disliking my new job also?”
“What if I pursue a new career only to find out that I am not good enough for it?”

Our minds like to think up the worst case scenarios, and there’s probably a good evolutionary reason why humans have evolved to be so cautious, but a little bit of rational thinking doesn’t hurt here as it helps us see that first of all, the worst case scenario is precisely that, just a “worst” case that likely won’t happen, and even if struggles await you in the future, it is much more empowering to live with full confidence that your future self will be able to handle the tough situations that will come up, than to be in a constant state of worry about things that haven’t even happened yet. Besides, it’s actually the struggles in life that truly develop you as a person. There are many upsides to quitting too, and those don’t get discussed enough.

In economic jargon, there is an “opportunity cost” to working. In plain English, that means that the number of hours in a day is limited, so the hours spent at your job represent the hours that could have been used to do something else. That something else, if it will lead you to future opportunities that you would not have otherwise, and is something you would value over what you are doing currently, making a change in your life is seriously worth your consideration.

However, a word of caution here is to not use your job as an excuse for not doing the thing that you want to pursue right now. Note that I only left my job when I was already landing a comfortable amount of gigs to know that my art had some value in the world, and I have lived frugally all my life and equipped myself with in-demand skills such as teaching and engineering to get me to a place where I can afford to take more calculated risks. You can always get started, and now is better than later. There are many great artists that started on the side, using their precious mornings/evenings pursuing their art. So regardless of what you decide to do about your day job, always be working on your art.

worthy of your attention

The plane landed slightly before the scheduled time. There was an air of excitement among the passengers. We were all eager go home and do whatever it was that each of us were going to do next. Sleep, see our loved ones, or in my case, play my piano. Then we got word that we had to wait on the taxiway for an indefinite amount of time because there was another plane parked at the gate where we were supposed to deplane. I thought to myself, “cool, extra time to get my Spanish studying in,” and started studying. About twenty minutes into being stuck there, I couldn’t help but notice the complaints coming from those around me about the situation: “Oh come on who messed up?” “How is it that airlines can never figure this stuff out?”

I admit that I too express my share of complaints about things at times, but if you step back and assess the situation, you notice just how silly this is. It is one thing to complain about something that can be changed. But to complain about a situation that simply won’t change or you have no power to change? What’s the point of that? Are those things even worth your attention?

One time, a student of mine messed up pretty bad in a piano recital. I asked him afterward, “so what do you think happened?” He was quick to respond “I got nervous. Also it was cold and my fingers didn’t move well.”

While it may be true that he got nervous and had cold fingers, I really was hoping for a different answer. Something like “I didn’t practice enough” because really, that would have been a much better attitude to have about what had just happened.

Do people get nervous for a performance? Sure, I get nervous every single time. Does a venue where you perform get cold at times? Of course. But those are out of your control. But you know what you could have done? Practice more. Practice so much so that you are so damn good, so that even with your nerves and freezing fingers, you still have complete command of the instrument, and you are able to perform at a high level.

Stop giving any of your attention to the things you cannot control, and focus meticulously on the things that you can. You will be amazed with your results.

on motivation

“My passion doesn’t give me joy any more. I don’t feel like doing anything,” a former coworker and a fellow artist called me asking for advice.

I knew exactly what she was going through.

People assume that because I have been pursuing music all my life, any time I spend on music is nothing but joy.

Lies. Far from it. In fact, it is perfectly normal for me to have days when I don’t feel like writing any music.

About four years ago, I took a sabbatical with the intention of focusing all of my time on music. I looked at the savings I had built up, which at that time was enough to cover about ten years worth of my then minimal living expenses. I told myself, “Let’s give this five years, give or take. For the next five years, I won’t work a normal day-job, and instead I’ll focus all my time on music and see where it takes me.”

Where this landed me was a complete surprise. It didn’t take very long for me to discover that I actually don’t like music as much as I thought I did. Yes I still love music to this day, but I don’t love it to a point to be spending all of my time on it. I have many other interests that give me joy. That unfortunately means that I won’t be the best player in the world, not even close. But I’m actually ok with that, and it took my sabbatical to come to this realization. When I went back to working, I regained my deep love for music again. How life works is funny sometimes. Although I didn’t get to the point where I thought I would, the saving grace is that I have been able to turn all of my interests (music, teaching, and engineering so far) into a way to generate income anyway, which is a great place to be in as that income then funds my continued self-improvement in various ways, which then leads to even more income, creating a wonderful positive feedback loop. I thank the mindset that I have gained from other artists which helped me to get to this point, so today, I want to share a bit of that mindset.

Why?
Some people ask, “Why bother? Why do I have be good at what I do?” This is something I’ve wondered too, and I don’t know if there is a universally correct answer. I don’t know if improving and becoming good at something is a worthy cause for everyone. But from personal experience, the better I get at something, the more enjoyable it gets, so that fact alone is enough to fuel my constant quest for improvement. There are also many side effects at being good at something too. That it creates an income stream is one, but more important for me is the ability to make a difference through art.

For example, it’s happened on multiple occasions that I am playing something on the piano and someone in the audience starts crying. There is some profound power in music that can’t be explained by words. I’ve also had a handful of young musicians tell me that they started playing music because of me. That’s actually why I started playing music seriously too, when I was inspired by a particular musical performance, so it’s heart warming to know that I have been able to pass on the torch to others.

What?
What should you be good at? I actually don’t think it matters much, as long as it is something positive. Like your goal shouldn’t be to elevate yourself by putting others down. But I also don’t think that you need a pre-existing passion for the things that you pursue. Phrases like “do what you love” and “follow your passion”, while they come from good intentions, are not very actionable advice. The problem is that these sayings can make you think that if you don’t “feel” like doing something, it may not be your passion and therefore you should stop. Now I know that that’s not the intent of both phrases and I still generally agree with the spirit of both (for example, if your life is shitty because you hate what you’re doing, you definitely have the power to do something to make your life awesome instead), however it is concerning to me that a person can hear these pieces of advice and takes away the wrong message, as explained below.

A common misunderstanding is that a passion is “found” and you must find yours too. But that’s not how it works. Rather, passion, like most other things in life, is developed slowly as a result of your actions. Your passions are also dynamic, as they continue to change drastically as you live out your life.

A common mindset among people, mostly due to cultural factors of our current society:“I feel like doing this” -> “Maybe this is my passion” -> “I’ll work on it” -> “I don’t feel like doing this today” -> “This must not be my passion” -> “Go find something else” -> Rinse and repeat

Unfortunately, this won’t lead you anywhere, as you will never find anything that you “always” feel like doing. There simply isn’t such a thing, and you will never be good at anything with that mindset.

An alternative (and more helpful) mindset: “I’m going to commit to working on this whether I feel like it or not” -> You develop a habit of self-improvement. -> You start to enjoy it more and more as you start to see the result of your work. -> The action becomes an automatic habit. -> You get really good at it. -> People appreciate you for your knowledge/ability/whatever. -> It feels good because you are contributing to something greater than yourself. -> You have developed “passion”.

Or, put it more succinctly,
“Passion leads to action” – No
“Action leads to passion” – Yes