The film makes a strong impression. The author of the article has reviewed it more than once: alone, with family or friends. And tried to unravel the secrets of Jiro's success. How did he become the best in the profession? What helped him? This will be discussed in the article.
Jiro says: "Once you have decided on the type of your activity, you should fully immerse yourself in the work. You have to fall in love with her. Never complain about what you do and dedicate your life to improving your skills. This is the secret of success and the key to universal recognition."
Jiro himself is extremely happy with his work, he is a blessed master who is in love with what he does every day. And this allows him to remain full of energy at his already quite advanced age.
It should be noted that Jiro does not say "find a dream job", sending a romantic quest to find a relaxing occupation. He says: love the job you have chosen.
This means consciously and voluntarily cultivating love, just as people do in marriage. That is why love in marriage is different from fleeting teenage infatuation, which quickly captures, but usually ends just as quickly and with a feeling of deep disappointment. According to Jiro, to find a true love for work, you will need to live a lifetime of devotion to it.
We often divide work into two types: some have a real passion for it from the very beginning, while others work only for money. But for some reason there are much more of the latter, and they like to claim that a job that causes real delight is a pipe dream, and they endure years of meaningless work for them, waiting for when they finally retire to start enjoying life.
What happens if we try to awaken in ourselves a sincere love for the work that we are currently doing only for the sake of money? This will greatly change our quality of life and reduce our furious expectation of weekends and holidays.
Sushi is by definition a simple meal, and Jiro took this minimalism to a new level, not only in the technique of making sushi, but also in his menu. Unlike other similar restaurants, Jiro does not serve snacks, but they collect a menu of 20 types of sushi every day. The restaurant serves only sushi and nothing else.
Moreover, it has only 10 seats. This allows the staff to focus on the preparation of sushi of the highest quality, and the customers are served there as well as possible, noticing even such small details as how much the customer eats or which hand he does it with, left or right.
Yoshikazu, Jiro's eldest son, who works as a chef in his own restaurant but still helps his father, says they repeat the same things every day. Actually, this is how mastery is achieved, through constant repetition.
Jiro follows the same rule outside of work: he does the same thing every day. Even standing in the same place waiting for a train in the subway. He doesn't like holidays and weekends and always dreams of getting back to work as soon as possible.
This is called professional growth in depth: not to scatter, but to do the same narrowly focused work every day, fully focusing on it. The combination of talent and hard work opens up a whole universe for creative research.
As the brilliant poet William Blake wrote:
To see the world in a grain of sand
And the sky in the cup of a flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And fit eternity into an hour.
If you get such pleasure from work — why the weekend?
Let's remember about the "passion work", which we mentioned earlier. Some people tend to believe that if you do a job that you love, then you are free from difficulties, and everything in your life is easy and simple. That's not so. Your favorite job will cost you very dearly, especially at the initial stage, choosing this path, you must be willing to pay a substantial price for travel.
This may sound contradictory, but the bottom line is that loving your job is sometimes very, very difficult, but if you persevere, you will be rewarded.
In Jiro's case, his work kept him away from his family, his children grew up without him. He had to struggle with poverty, and when he got married, he had absolutely no savings. Years later, his children had to save money for months to afford Coca-Cola.
Today everything has changed, Jiro has a great relationship with the children who learned the craft from their father, but it took years of sacrifice and hard work to get to this peak. There were blows of fate, there were falls during the years of his training, but he went forward. But then he had students who couldn't stand a day in the kitchen.
There is another point — Jiro's bliss, which he finds in his daily work, cannot be achieved by quick decisions and a four-hour work week. It can be achieved only by hard, intense, concentrated and even painful work. You will not be able to find a dream job, it will become magical only after you marry her for life, she will reward you for your devotion.
Jiro's story teaches that love and self-sacrifice will be rewarded with things that exceed all expectations, which cannot be achieved using the "formula for rapid success". You can argue with this statement, but it's definitely worth thinking about it and it's worth watching the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi", it's very inspiring.
