Mogic considers

Holidays, hobbies, boredom, 21st century

We regularly receive the following complaint from intern students: "I am so bored on my days off. I have no hobbies, so I laze around and regret it.

When I asked him if he really has no hobbies, I was surprised to hear that he does not.

Cooking, tea, shopping, walking, reading manga, watching Netflix, playing games, internet, barbecuing, sightseeing.

I think those could be hobbies, but something else seems to be stuck because they are not hobbies and boredom is not confusing.

Incidentally, although there are various theories, the concept of "leisure" and having more than two days off per week is said to have become widespread in the 1930s after the Industrial Revolution.

From there, leisure facilities for weekend play were built, national parks for mountain hiking were developed, and a style of extended vacation stays was created.

But come to think of it, it is only 100 years old, and in Japan it is probably even shorter.

And so now we are constantly connected online, and the distinction between time spent working and even time spent having fun is blurring.

As the difficulty of their way of life continues to increase, we continue to discuss what is a good way for them to live.

Transparency of the Mona Lisa

I have heard that Da Vinci's Mona Lisa has amazingly clear skin.

It seems that several very thin, nearly transparent films are layered on top of each other, which is unthinkable in a normal production process.

If it is applied while it is still dry, it will mix with the layer below, and the time and effort required to wait several months and then apply another coat is transparent.

Paint, wait, look, think, and paint again.

The transition in thinking must have been considerable, since they first started painting and then layered on the constantly changing ideas.

I can't spend this much time on it, but I may record how my thinking changed at the beginning and end of one project.

The initial feeling, the way you feel during the process, the ideas you arrive at, and what you see when you look back later.

There are good changes and bad changes for me, and when the limits that were unconscious and blurred become beautifully transparent, all is well.

Like a small yacht.

I went to a small sailboat training course over the weekend and my back was stiff, probably because I sat on a hard deck and chair for a long time.

There are many terms to learn and many actions to perform, so my head is full of ideas.

To begin with, a sailboat has two sails, and the rudder (tiller) is operated with one hand by adding or subtracting a sheet (rope) in conjunction with the sails.

The weather changes from moment to moment, the wind swings in small increments, and you have to feel the waves ahead of you.

When I operate, there are so many elements that I can't change well and I can't always get into the flow.

When you get used to it a little bit and suddenly it fits well, it's like riding the wind and it becomes fun.

This is a sense of oneness with nature that is not found in boats that are powered by electricity.

In this way, I think it is similar to starting a business in that you are groping and feeling and changing.

The faint voice of a client, the flutter of a new market, money that seems to disappear, a desperate effort to hang on.

Even if you think you have to respond well to this or that, it usually doesn't work.

We just have to seek the moment when we can ride the wind as we feel it.

We began creating subsidiaries several years ago because we wanted the members we worked with to have that kind of experience.

It is a feeling that cannot be experienced by watching from afar or riding in a boat that is being piloted by someone else.

We are still rowing out on our own little yacht and struggling to fit everything in.

We are looking forward even if it rains hard or the waves are high, so we are sure that one day we will catch the wind successfully.

Reading books, a bit of a transition

Since entering the workforce, there has been a slight transition in the way I read books.

At first I don't know anything, so I pick up an introductory book.

Once I got used to it, I wanted to understand one area comprehensively, which led me to archival-type reading.

Archival reading means reading books in one field this way and that, but with a twist.

There are more than 100 books on the shelves of bookstores in any one field, and it is not advisable to read them all.

So I think how can we learn in the shortest distance, just 80% of the total amount of knowledge.

As some of you have noticed, we use something called Pareto's Law.

The idea is that 20% of the total matter can represent 80% of the results.

You start reading thinking that you can get 80% of your knowledge in 20 out of 100 books, and then you start abbreviating more and more in a nested fashion, thinking that you can get 80% of what you want to say in 20% of a book, or that if you learn 20% of the technical terms, you can explain 80% of the whole.

Even then, there are limits, so I had to compress it reasonably well to get the whole picture before I could talk to anyone.

Eventually, this method will not be able to wipe out the antiquity of the archive itself.

The next idea was streaming reading.

Unlike the archives, I only look at books that have been reviewed this week, books that acquaintances and friends said were good last week, and magazines that caught my attention today.

The idea was to try to capture a sense of the season, the now, in an atmosphere that was more than just words.

However, over the past few years, we have increasingly felt the limitations of this as well.

After thinking about the cause, I suspect that the production process of the book medium is a contributing factor.

It takes six months for the author to come up with the idea and discuss it with the editor at the publishing house, six months to several years to start writing it, and another six months to get it printed and into circulation, which is 1.5 years at the shortest and several years at the longest.

In the past, until a book was distributed, the information contained in it did not often get out ahead of time.

However, as the Internet has developed, some of the relevant information is easily circulated.

A group of highly finished texts received 1.5 years after the author came up with the idea, and fragmented, coarse messages sent out here and there around the time the author came up with the idea.

It feels like the two are competing and we need to develop new ways of doing things again.

In keeping with the fault lines of the times

I know this is sensational, but I think we are seeing a major fault line of the times.

The disagreement in the ABC prediction problem in mathematics and the development of the discussion from the AdS/CFT correspondence in physics is difficult to understand as a live human being.

The overlaying of the impossible at the same time has become an important theme, and we are discussing what we should do about it.