Reflections on reading "Qianfa" by Kazuo Inamori

There was a joke that became very popular a few years ago. Someone went for an interview, and HR asked him: "What is your dream?" He said: "My dream is not to work." HR asked again: "Then why did you come to the interview?" The other person replied: "In order to realize my dream "Although it is a funny joke, it really expresses the feelings of many people. Do you think so too? In our perception, work means tricky business, annoying bosses and endless overtime.

When they hear the word "go to work", many people immediately have a stress reaction. So, those of us who hate work so much, have we ever thought about why people have to work?

In this book, Kazuo Inamori tells us his answer.

He founded Kyoto Ceramics Co., Ltd. at the age of 27, founded Second Telecom at the age of 52, and came back to save JAL at the age of 77. It can be said that he has been working all his life. He became famous in his youth, so why is Kazuo Inamori still working so hard?

The first important reason is that he believes that work can temper the soul, improve the mind, and build our personality.

Many people believe that working is to obtain labor remuneration and maintain survival. This is indeed one of the important reasons for working. However, Kazuo Inamori feels that the more important purpose of work is to improve his own ambition. It is very difficult to temper one's character, but there is great power hidden in work that can achieve this goal.

The book gives such an example. A master carpenter in his 70s who only went to elementary school has been engaged in building shrines for decades. Even though it was hard, tiring, and boring, he still endured and overcame all kinds of hardships, worked diligently, studied with concentration, and built a beautiful shrine. He said: "There is life in the trees. When we work, we must listen to the voice of this life. When using wood that is thousands of years old, the exquisiteness of our work must withstand the test of the sun and the moon for thousands of years." Yes, during the work process , carpenters not only create beautiful buildings, but also temper their minds and shape their souls.

We often hear the term "craftsman spirit". In the process of work, we complete various tasks and reap the spiritual personality endowed by the work. When creating sculptures, craftsmen learn to be calm; when taking photos and recordings, photographers learn to observe details; when teaching, teachers learn to be patient and loving... Kazuo Inamori said that when you devote yourself to work wholeheartedly, We can improve our skills and temper our will. At this time, labor has become a place of "improvement" for self-realization and personality improvement.

I am particularly interested in the spirit of Japanese craftsmanship. For example, some chefs spend their whole lives doing one thing, frying tempura, as if every tempura has a soul; in China, this In recent years, I have also admired the spirit of craftsmanship. For example, I tried the Zhangqiu iron pot on the tip of my tongue. It took 36,000 hammers to make a pot, and the bottom of the spoon was white in color. We adhere to Planet’s 21-day speech training camp. From the first day it was launched on August 1, 2016, to today, every issue has been iterated, achieving a pass rate of more than 92% in each issue. As the courses are continuously upgraded and iterated, In fact, our planet also has the spirit of craftsmanship.

The second important reason mentioned by Kazuo Inamori is that serious work can turn our lives around.

When he was a child, his parents once taught Inamori Kazuo: "You should pay for the sufferings of youth." The young Inamori dismissed this sentence. It was not until later that he truly understood this. The meaning of the sentence.

Inamori Kazuo, who graduated from university, joined a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy. Due to constant internal strife in this company, wages were often not paid. Kazuo Inamori wanted to find another way out and enrolled in the Self-Defense Force Cadre Candidate School, but his documents were incomplete and he missed the opportunity to enroll. He was very distressed as he watched his colleagues in the same period leave one after another for better development. Wavering between leaving and staying, he finally convinced himself and decided to immerse himself in work first. Through extremely serious work, Kazuo Inamori developed "forsterite", a cutting-edge new ceramic material.

The original Inamori Kazuo was still worrying about whether to resign and his future life development. After working hard, his life trajectory changed dramatically. The company that was about to collapse came back to life, and he also received more development opportunities, and he later became a world-famous entrepreneur.

This experience was truly inspiring. We often complain, why does someone whose grades and qualifications are not as good as ours get into a big company? Someone was born with a good life, was born with a golden key in his mouth, and had no worries about food and drink throughout his life. Why didn't he have this blessing? While accepting these helplessness, we can only fight against the injustice of fate with extremely serious work. The wonderful experience brought about by extremely serious work cannot be bought with money.

We must believe that the frustrations and sufferings in life will be disintegrated by extremely serious work, and our lives will also enter a virtuous circle, just like Inamori, who had a bumpy fate before the age of twenty-five. Kazuo.

The third important reason shared in the book is that on the other side of hard work is a better life.

We all want to live a life where we don’t have to work and can eat, drink and have fun every day. But this kind of long-term goalless life will cast a shadow on life.

In 2003, Ma Hongping, a young man from Northeast China, won a 5 million grand prize. Looking at it now, this amount is also very considerable. However, people are dissatisfied, and Ma Hongping, who has tasted the sweetness, begins to block it more, looking forward to winning the next time.

In 2004, he bought a lottery ticket for 3,000 yuan at a time. To his surprise, he won another 5 million yuan! Winning the lottery twice in succession has brought Ma Hongping a lot of wealth, but he is still not satisfied.

In order to make himself richer, he bet more and more. After squandering all his savings, he still did not stop and instead owed a lot of debt. Reluctant, Ma Hongping defrauded more than 1.7 million yuan under the guise of an investment project. In the end, Ma Hongping, who had dreams of winning the lottery, was caught and imprisoned.

You see, winning the lottery made Ma Hongping rich, but his heart was still poor. Obsessed with the dream of pie in the sky, after all, you will not be able to achieve a beautiful life.

Inamori Kazuo tells us that to obtain happiness in the heart, the prerequisite is labor. Only by working seriously and getting rewards for our efforts can we feel the joy of life and the value of time. I have always believed that if virtue is not matched, there will be disaster.

In 2018, a student from Persistence Planet invited me to try investing in blockchain. I couldn’t resist the repeated recommendation, and I really wanted to know what the so-called trend was at that time, so I invested some, and the results were really good. I made money, and then invested a lot, earning 2 million in a week. Later, this student told me that at this rate, I could earn 100 million a year. During that time, my energy was really affected by this project. After a lot of losses, the final result was that it collapsed overnight and all the money earned was lost, and more than 2 million in principal was lost. My former student made a maximum profit of about 30 million, but in the end he lost it all and invested all his capital assets of tens of millions.

I remember that when the blockchain was the hottest, some people encouraged me to issue coins. They gave me a name, Dragon Coin. They said that with my influence, I could make money in one year after issuing the coins. 1 billion. After I learned about blockchain investment, I rejected it directly, because this kind of investment without physical support is just empty. The money you make is lost by others. This kind of thing must not be done. If virtue is not matched, there will be disaster, and the right path in the world is subject to vicissitudes of life. Only by working hard around the mission of "improving the speaking ability of 100 million Chinese people" will I feel at ease and comfortable, and will I get results one after another.

Many years ago, when the Kyocera company founded by Kazuo Inamori was listed on the stock market for the first time, someone advised him to relax and have fun from now on. But Kazuo Inamori refused. He believed that listing was not the end, but a new starting point. The company must develop better from now on to live up to the expectations of employees and investors. Continuing to work hard is not a burden to him, but a necessary element to create a better life.

Having said that, today’s sharing is almost over. Now do you know why people work? Because through work, we can temper our souls, improve our minds, and turn our lives around in extremely serious work, and such a life is bound to be beautiful. Kazuo Inamori has a suggestion for those who hate work, that is, you might as well work harder. Gradually, your originally fragile mind will be tempered, and your life will slowly get on the right track.

Have you realized it?