Last week I watched “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” again. It must be the eighth time I revisited this piece of art. I have very little interest in sushi, but there is much more to this documentary. It was first recommended to me by my good friend Anders more than five years ago, but I couldn’t grasp its underlying life lessons the first time around.
Even though I couldn’t fully understand the message, I was intrigued by it and kept returning to the documentary. Over the years, I managed to grasp more of its deeper meaning. The documentary is about Jiro: one of the best sushi chefs in the world. His tiny restaurant, located in a subway station, even received a 3 Michelin star rating. So how does a man operating from a subway restaurant become the best in the world? And what can a DevOps Engineer learn from a sushi chef?
Jiro is referred to as a shokunin, a Japanese cultural phenomenon that doesn’t have a direct translation into English. A shokunin is an artisan or a craftsman who has devoted his entire life to becoming a master of his craft. For example, there are shokunin carpenters, weavers, and blacksmiths. The shokunin achieve mastery by doing the same action over and over again and trying to improve with every repetition.
“Once you decide on your occupation, you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That’s the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably.”
- Jiro
We get to know Jiro as a man who is devoted to his occupation. He follows the same routine every day; he even gets on the train from the same position. He says he dislikes holidays and prefers to be at work. He used to get up at 5:00 and get home after 22:00. Even at age 85, he’s still working at the restaurant every day, simply because he doesn’t want to do anything else.
But it’s not just about putting in long hours and working past the retirement age. It’s also about the mindset and the attitude that Jiro has adopted towards his craft:
“I’ve seen many chefs who are self-critical, but I’ve never seen another chef who is so hard on himself. He sets the standard for self-discipline. He’s always looking ahead. He’s never satisfied with his work. He’s always trying to find ways to make the sushi better or to improve his skills. Even now, that’s what he thinks about every day.”
- Masuhiro Yamamoto, Food Critic.
Finding my Craft
It was hard to decide on my occupation. It took me 32 years and a lot of trial and error to find the answer. I have always envied people who knew they wanted to become a nurse since childhood.
What occupation should I choose? I answered this question by answering another question: what do I like to do in my free time? The answer was clear: I tinkered with computers. I had already coded several websites and loved experimenting with game automation. I ran “bot farms” on Linux servers which I configured myself from the command line.
I decided to make IT and tech my occupation. Fortunately for me, the job market was in my favor, and employers were much more willing to consider candidates without a formal background in IT. If you’d like to read more, I wrote about my journey into DevOps in this article.
The Ways of the Shokunin
After making the career change, I adopted the shokunin mindset and dedicated my life to mastering my craft. In practical terms, I needed to commit to devoting my time to my profession and avoid straying from it. Making this commitment wasn’t very difficult because I chose my career based on my free-time activities. It’s more about adopting a mindset of striving to make everything relate to each other. For example, I try to select hobby projects that directly relate to what I’m working with during the day. This way, my leisure activities will strengthen my professional skills, and my professional expertise will improve my hobby projects, creating a feedback loop that will eventually lead to results.
However, sticking to one thing does not necessarily come naturally to me. I have a tendency to pick up many different hobbies and get very excited about them. First, I will become extremely interested in a particular subject. Then, after approximately three months, I put it aside and become excited about something else. This isn’t necessarily a case of Shiny Object Syndrome because I tend to return to these hobbies in a cyclical pattern. As I apply myself to learning the skill with a feverish intensity, I’m able to make a lot of progress during these bouts of obsession. But to the outside world, it might seem like I’m constantly changing my mind about what I want.
I always considered this a negative character trait, but over the past few years, I’ve learned to embrace it and guide this tendency in the right direction. Because I chose IT as my occupation and DevOps as an area of specialization, I gave myself a broad scope of interest with many sub-skills to learn. If you look at the DevOps Roadmap, you’ll see that a good DevOps Engineer must master many different skills.
It’s like I’ve given myself a large playground with a fence around it, full of exciting things to learn. I can go down a Python rabbit hole for a few months and improve my coding skills. Later, I find myself sucked into builing my own OS and learning more about Linux in the process. The fence around the playground isn’t locked, but I do my best to stay inside the fence. When, for example, I start getting the urge to get back into music production again, I consider that it will take up a few hours a day to get back on track. Investing these hours into something that brings me joy, but is also related to my occupation, would be a better option. Reflecting in this way keeps me focused on my goals.
My website is another example of this fusion between professional and free-time activities. I love to write. It’s a relaxing activity, even though it is very challenging sometimes. After I learn about a new subject, I try to write about it. This is the best way I know to verify whether I’ve really understood the topic. When I sit down to write about something, I force myself to think clearly about it and to make sure everything aligns properly in my mind. When I cannot explain the concepts in a few clear sentences, I know I don’t fully understand it yet.
“Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.”
- William Zinsser, On Writing Well
Another way my blog supports my professional development is because I prefer to write my blog posts in neovim in the markdown format. Writing and editing text often involves moving a lot of words and paragraphs around. Because I use vim to do my writing, I’m also constantly practicing the keybinds I use for writing and editing code during my day job. I often learn a new motion for my blog writing, which I use the next day at work.
Never Finished
“All I want to do is make better sushi. I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is. Even at my age, after decades of work, I don’t think I have achieved perfection. But I feel ecstatic all day. I love making sushi. That’s the spirit of the shokunin.”
- Jiro
Jiro taught me never to be satisfied with my skills. If I desire to become a master of my craft, there will never be a point where I can lean back and think that I’ve learned enough. There’s always something to improve, which is why I chose an IT career. My thirst for learning cannot be quenched, and there’s always something to learn in this field.
Devotion
Although it might seem like a simple food documentary, do not be deceived. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is full of valuable life lessons. It’s one of the documentaries which I revisit regularly. It’s relaxing to watch, and I get hugely inspired by Jiro’s devotion to his craft and powerful teachings every time.
Jiro’s guidance has changed my life. He made me realize that if I wished to become a master of my craft, I needed to devote my life to it. I changed my lifestyle, so the things I do in my free time strengthen my professional skills. I also became more mindful of the content I consume and the things I read, trying to keep it related to my occupation. He showed me the true meaning of the phrase “my work is my hobby.”
“Always look beyond and above yourself. Always try to improve on yourself. Always strive to elevate your craft. That’s what he taught me.”
- Yoshikazu, Jiro’s oldest son.