Read enough books and everything starts blurring together. I rarely recognize a good point in a book that I haven’t seen some version of before in another book.
Stumbling on the video below reminded me of the book Zen and the Art of Archery where the author learns the same lesson of focusing on the process, not the goal.
The advice in the book also reminded me of something Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning:
“Don’t aim at success-the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”
Similar focus on the process advice appears in my favorite documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi (though not in this clip):
A good piece of general advice is never alone. Mutations of it with different people and contexts show up several other places. The hard part is recognizing the value.
On a side note, I originally found the archery video from stumbling on the greatest homemade travel video I’ve seen:
January in Japan from Scott Gold on Vimeo.