My encounter with this book
Today's book. For our eighth installment, we're featuring a book co-authored by Yataro Matsuura, former editor-in-chief of Kurashi no Techo magazine, and his business partner, Tetsuya Nojiri: "The Basics of Working."
I first encountered this book in 2017. I was under immense pressure at work at the large company I joined right after graduating, and I was feeling quite mentally exhausted when I came across it in a bookstore.
Whenever I was troubled by something, my first instinct was to escape to a large bookstore, and for lunch I would only eat cold soba noodles. I was about 26 years old at the time. 2017 was a year of big change for me; I got married and my eldest son was born during this period, and I was also dealing with the difficult challenge of becoming a parent for the first time, so it was quite tough.
Six years have passed since then, and my mental strength has increased considerably. I can now discern what suits me and what doesn't, and I can relatively easily distance myself from things when necessary. I no longer have days where I can only manage to eat something like cold soba noodles for lunch.
The words that appear on the page you randomly open are what you need right now.
This book has 100 essential mindsets for working laid out on a two-page spread, so you don't even need to read the text from the first page. Therefore, I keep it on my desk at all times, calming myself down and choosing the sentence that appears on the page that best suits my current needs.
I'll share some words that came to mind when I tried using it the same way again today.
What are your fundamental principles of work?
Thank you for reading to the end.
Have a great day!
