The book is awesome with practical uses for this theory, including goal management. You can make an online test to find out your time profile, also. That way you can plan your strategy better and know your weaknesses.

You can watch him talk about this theory on various talks on youtube, check it out! 

The only reason I thought about it was by looking at the construction of the train tracks they have been working on for *several years now* (although it’s construction has only been visible above ground in the past year). The average city slicker may or may not care, but they get to watch the construction workers working on those tracks daily, and watch its really slow progress until after a year, or two, or three, it turns into an amazing, brand spanking new train track.

The same applies to the giant buildings you see under construction in 東京. They usually have a big white fence surrounding them to keep away a bit of the eyesore (but there are always little windows you can peek in and check on its progress, regardless of how slow; and see the construction workers slaving away on their project day after day, beam by beam). But what’s just as amazing is they always have the date the project is planned to be finished by (usually 2-3 years later), so they *know* how long it takes, and how much little work it required to get there. And, they’re usually on time.

And I’m pretty sure those construction workers working on buildings, etc in 東京 live in the city they work.

I’ll say the same goes for corporations as well. Sony didn’t start out as a giant, international conglomerate. It started as one dude (井深大) who started a started a tiny radio repair shop in a bomb-damaged building. Then he built on it a bit at a time. A short 65 years later, he added another 167,899 people to the roster.

In any case. There, we city slickers ain’t all that bad 😉

Yeah, the closest katakanisation for my name is ダニ, which is a horrible bug which lives in your tatami and bites you in the night :-(. So I artificially elongated the final syllable a bit when I got here, just to differentiate myself from those: ダニー.

Given that mine is a pretty common name, there are plenty of other people called Dani/Danny who have come over here, and I’ve seen the name written both ways (ダニ／ダニー), so I guess it’s not that unusual.

In any case, the fact is that your name is probably going to sound totally different in Japanese anyway due to the limited set of sounds available, so you may as well choose something different-sounding that also sounds, y’know, good.

Anyway, back on topic…

I agree with the post. And it’s reawakened the “leave it all behind and go live life as a farmer somewhere in the middle of nowhere for a bit just to see what it’s like” fantasy that I indulge in a couple of times a year. But, here’s a thought…

Those who’ve lived in the country, as you say, have an appreciation for just putting the work in and trusting nature to take its course and deliver them rewards down the line. City slickers like a sense of measurable progress. They like to see immediate results when they put in the work. They (we) would find it hard to go out into the country, and plant seeds, and just trust that one day those seeds will grow into cabbages, or carrots, or mielies, or whatever. “If only there were a way to monitor all this!” They would scream.

If only there was a device that you could plant WITH the seed, that would sit there, nurturing and monitoring it. If you were worried about the status of your seed, you could go look at some graphs describing how it’s developing. If the seed looked to be dying, the device would quickly give it an injection to bring it back to life; so that not only does it give you a sense of progress, but it ensures that progress continues. And even once the seed has grown into a big, strong plant, that device would be there, making sure it doesn’t rot, stopping it from catching some disease and dying. It would take the uncertainty, and the fear that nothing is happening right out of farming! In fact, I think I’m going to patent this idea; I’ll call it the “Seed Revival System”, or, you know, SRS for short.

Of course, this is sort of another angle to the main thrust of your article, which I think was “just chill out a bit, O neurotic worriers of the world”. But for those who struggle to take things on faith, for those addicted to that sense of measurable progress… SRS helps. So long as you don’t get too obsessed with the numbers and start stressing out when they’re not advancing as quickly “as they should be”. If there’s one thing I’ve started to learn recently, it’s that there is no should, there is only what is — I might go for over a week without adding any sentences to my SRS, because I just don’t feel like it, but of course I’m still doing Japanese every day. When I come back to the SRS, lo and behold, lots of sentences that would have been painful and difficult a week ago are suddenly a joy to understand and enter in.

In short:
1) Use the SRS to give you the sense of measurable progress you’re so addicted to…
2) …but also trust your instincts. If there’s enough Japanese around you, “slumps” will right themselves. In fact, they’re probably not slumps at all, just moments of germination where your mind needs to be left alone to process its new information.

My name is Zach. So, technically I should go by ザック. However, to give myself more of a renewed, Japanese identity, I referred back to a childhood nickname (Zachy) and fiddled with it a little. To my Japanese friends, I go by ざっちー.
This is your chance to choose your own name. I wouldn’t be afraid to play around to get something you like and is easily pronounced in Japanese.

Hope that helps a little. (^0^)

On a different note, I’m glad the sidebars are back, Khatz. They helped me in the beginning and I think the fresher newbies will be grateful for them as well.

To me the rural feels like it runs on a cycle. It’s more about the process of life here and not about the ends. That’s true. But something is also lost with that.

Go up a high slope and you may be able to look down across an entire valley (in my case, the ocean), but eventually your vision will only take you so far. If you want to go across that valley, or go across the sea, then you need a car or a plane.

In the city, a long term perspective would be considered as looking a year or two down the road. In terms of our entire life, this is actually short term.

But is this such a bad thing? It’s not a conscious effort of limiting vision, but rather that the horizon becomes blurry. This is because of change.

Everything in the city is changing. Industries that people work in are often changing. The environment itself is changing. People are changing as they join different social groups and widen their perspective. It’s hard to think about ten years down the road because circumstances just won’t be the same.

Let’s look back at the farmer. Does the work change that much? Excluding outside social forces which may affect the business side of their work, the farming itself does not face so much change. They do their work for life, raise their children, and their children may continue the parent’s work. In Japan’s case, the children will also learn and repeat the same festivals that their parents did. Local festivals and school festivals. Year after year, the same process can be expected.

To get outside of your bubble and see other perspectives, to experience more change in life, the city life is best. City folk may not be wise and may not see down the long term, but in focusing on the short term and living in a changing environment something else is gained.

(Writing style aside: imo, city = micro-managers, rural = macro-managers. Combining both is the way to win. In the end, it’s a matter of personalities too. We tend to lean one way or the other.)