Having a high say-do ratio has always been important to me
I've never encountered this idea, but as soon I read it I suddenly see it everywhere. My roommate who tells me he'll clean the kitchen then doesn't; my cousin who says he'll come to dinner then cancels. My best friend who says she'll start going to the gym and never does. My world is awash in people who say the most wonderful things and then don't do any of them; it feels like a distinctly modern phenomenon. I find it hard not to resent people for this, but I try, because not everything is equally important, and not everyone can be as determined as we might like. As this article illustrates, we are ultimately only in control of our own actions.
I think this is mostly the culture of "should". In our highly individualized society that glorifies self ambition, the list of things we "should" do are endless. However, when we say "I should go to the gym", we're not saying "I value my personal health and wellbeing and am convinced the gym is a path to that", but rather, "Society/friends/family/work might value me a little more if I do this" or "society may value me less if I don't do this". Not too much different from when we buy vegetables at the grocery store because we believe we "should" eat them, only to see them rot away in our refrigerator until we have to throw them out. The saying part is the easy first step, but our values are not in-line to follow through. In the end, "should" is just a mild-ish form of shame and shame is often a terrible motivator for long-term change.
yeah a lot of the self help industry is built on shaming and shoulds. We "should" excercise for 60 minutes a day, meditate for 30-60 minutes, go for a walk after meals, work on career, our brand, our hobbies, our business, read a book for 30 minutes.
Like Oliver Burkemann said, most of these producutivity articles are written by and for 20 year old kids with no family, no responsibility; and the rest of us are shamed if we dont meet these impossible standards.
> My best friend who says she'll start going to the gym and never does.
My friend always calls me out on this, and now I'm being haunted by you too, a person form the internet!
But on a more serious note, I think often times people believe when they say they want to do something, but end up not doing it for various reasons. Sometimes it's lack of self-love, other times it's low energy levels or lapses in time management. Sometimes people do try, but get discouraged and shy away.
I think the person on the other side ia often just as frustrated by themselves—if not even more, but they can't tell what and where it went wrong, which is equally frustrating in itself.
I am the best person at frustrating myself and fucking my days up. Sigh I never learn.
I hated this when I was younger. But I've learned to do it, too. To please people. I don't really want, but I also don't want to have the discussion, of why I don't want. Now I try to not do this anymore and speak the truth, but I understand the meaning of why someone does this.
First off, it was kinda hard. I am old and have lots of knowledge.
I went through some time where I didn't have much to pull from, so I found myself "being silent". Basically when talking with friends and bs'ing, I'd have to keep my mouth shut on the _should_, go do it and the next time show what I worked on.
It means getting off soshmeeds (like hn) and doing some sht, documenting it enough to explain it. I restarted from the comment I typed yesterday. :)
Don't resent people for this. I used to as well. But these people only try to become better versions of themselves. And for various reasons fail. It's still noble of them to keep trying.
There are many things I want to have done but which I don't want to do. I think the key to improving your say-do ratio is to figure out how to do the thing such that it's something you want to do, not something you want to have done. For me, many tasks can be converted into something enjoyable by adding earbuds and a podcast.
I think this is a common cultural practice in many places in the US. It is nice to say nice things that are not necessarily true or make friendly invitations that are not firm invitations. In other cultures it is better to say true things and/or limit pleasantries that are not true.
I heard it best explained by an old Japanese teacher. Say you bump into an old high school friend on the street. You have a quick chat and at the end he says “we should get together some time”. He doesn’t really mean he wants to get together. That’s tatemae.
If he says “we should get together some time, how’s next Tuesday at 7?” That’s honne.
Sharing some Korean Yojijukugos (originating from China)
위록지마(謂鹿止馬) wii rok ji ma
To point at a deer and call it a horse. Used for suck ups who says agrees to things that are clearly not right.
읍참마속(泣斬馬謖) ub cham ma sok
To behead Ma Su (name) while crying. In the Romance of Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang had to behead his favourite general Ma Su as he wept because Ma Su ignored the given command resulting in losing the war. This is used when you have to be fair for the greater good.
There are also fake yojijukugos which were created on online forums. These are not based on Chinese characters but made by taking letters from Korean phrases. But they caught on because they kinda sound like real yojijikugos :D
내로남불 nae ro nam bul
Romance for me, but adultery for you. Used for people who are lenient to themselves but strict to others.
자강두천 ja gang doo cheon
Fight of two strong-sprited geniuses. Used when two strong characters butt head with each other.
>위록지마(謂鹿止馬) wii rok ji ma
To point at a deer and call it a horse. Used for suck ups who says agrees to things that are clearly not right.
Adding a little bit of context to this: This seems to be the same origin as the Japanese word baka: 馬鹿 which means stupid and is the combination of the word Horse（馬） and deer (鹿). It has a quite funny background story[1] from ancient China:
>Zhao Gao was contemplating treason but was afraid the other officials would not heed his commands, so he decided to test them first. He brought a deer and presented it to the Second Emperor but called it a horse. The Second Emperor laughed and said, "Is the chancellor perhaps mistaken, calling a deer a horse?" Then the emperor questioned those around him. Some remained silent, while some, hoping to ingratiate themselves with Zhao Gao, said it was a horse, and others said it was a deer. Zhao Gao secretly arranged for all those who said it was a deer to be brought before the law. Thereafter the officials were all terrified of Zhao Gao.
The English wiki is a bit kind to him, because in the original one it wasn't "put before the law" but killed/executed. So the "fool/stupid" person is not the one that called a deer a horse, but the ones that didn't
Here's another interesting one that gamers might recognize, JP-from-CN:
> 竜頭蛇尾 (ryuutou dabi) "Dragon head, snake tail"
Blizzard's Overwatch team decided that would make a cool family motto for a ninja clan, so it features prominently in the game's launch cinematic and some in-game areas. But they apparently never looked up the meaning, which is basically "starting strong but ending weak", or just "anticlimactic".
Huh, sounds a little like how Overwatch unfolded! Strong start, a lot of enthusiasm, now everybody's pretty much over it and the competitive scene is dying (?)
When indigenous Mexicans first met Spaniards, they described their horses (which are not native to the New World, so they had never seen before) as “a sort of giant deer”.
It’s totally off-topic here but I always thought that was interesting.
There were actually horses in the new world, it's just that the natives hunted them all to extinction well before the Europeans arrived. Likewise with most other "mega fuana" in North America. There's also theories that climate changes played a role in addition to over exploitation.
True, but to be clear, they had gone extinct thousands of years before the Spanish brought them back, so the natives in the early 16th century had no way of knowing about them.
Haha, I did think about using the Korean word instead but just decided to go with the flow. East Asian culture is so intertwined, it's a pity we all have such a love-hate relationship with each other.
> 위록지마(謂鹿止馬) wii rok ji ma
> To point at a deer and call it a horse.
Very common South Indian proverb. Of course, our version goes -
To point at a donkey and call it a horse.
I guess because donkeys are way more common than deer in South India. I'm curious about the etymology. Did it really originate in China ? If so, how come its so commonly used in South India ? The Chinese monks Faxian[1] and Xuanzang[2] visited India during the 5th/7th AD...the proverb came along with them ?
The phrase comes from Sima Qian's "The Records of the Grand Historian" written in 94BCE. Zhao Gao was a eunuch and hid the first Emperor's death and schemed to have the rightful heir killed. Zhao installed a puppet and tested everyone's loyalty by declaring a stag a horse and dared anyone to question him.
Ma Su is also relevant because Zhuge Liang was repeatedly warned that Ma Su had more head knowledge than ability so should not receive a major command. Zhuge Liang's emotions and admiration cost him not only the campaign, but a dear friend.
References to the emperor’s new clothes seem to be focused on the moment when the lie everyone is going along with finally gets revealed, though. I think the English equivalent is more like “brown nosing.”
I wonder how much further ahead of western cultures, eastern asian cultures would have been if they didn't kill (or commit suicide) every time someone made a mistake.
It makes for a fun bridging the gap cultural experience when talking to Chinese people about the Chinese idioms you learn in Japanese class. Even the pronunciation is so similar (I mean, of course it is, duh).
My favorite one is 吴越同舟 or 呉越同舟 (Wú Yuè tóng zhōu) meaning people of different backgrounds finding themselves having to work together.
It's indeed a regrettable circumstance that the diplomatic ties between the two countries don't reflect their cultural similarities. My parents, who are Chinese and in their 60s, managed to travel around Japan without knowing Japanese or English. They successfully took trains, hailed taxis, and communicated with locals using just a pen and paper, ultimately enjoying their trip.
I'm sure they have Chinese around other places, but one thing I've noticed around train stations in Tokyo is that for the major announcements they are read out in Japanese, English, and Chinese. Hopefully those announcements were something that helped them on their journey.
Very nice, I also like the other yojijukugo displayed at the bottom, especially jyuunintoiro. I enjoy (what I perceive as) the subtle wordplay of having two different readings of the same character (ten) in the word, hinting at the sort of "more than one way to skin a cat" theme of the word.
Literally, the characters are "ten people ten colors", but the two "tens" are read differently: "jyuu" and "to" respectively, because the same character can have multiple readings.
Yojijukugo are really fun, I've written about them a bit here if anyone wants more context: https://jm.dev/yojijukugo
In some sense yojijukugo are the original memes, in that they can be riffed off for humorous purposes. For example, the Japanese idiom for "the strong devour the weak" is 弱肉強食 jakuniku kyuushoku (the meat of the weak is the food of the strong), but you can instead say 焼肉定食 yakuniku teishoku (lit. grilled meat set meal) for laughs, and rakugo comedian Jakusaburo Katsura released an album called 雀肉共食 jakuniku kyuushoku (same reading, but meaning "let's eat sparrow meat together" and referring to his own name).
Japanese is a wonderful language for puns. Not only do they have homophone puns (so many homophones) and rhyming puns, but also visual puns like Katamari Damacy 塊魂.
I have been wanting to learn Japanese but have been putting it off, you just convinced me that I have to get started learning it already. I love a good pun!
I always joke with my wife that my favorite yojijukugo are 問題解決 and 安全第一 which are literally just "problem solving" and "safety first" haha.
My favorite actual yojijukugo is 点滴穿石 which water dripping on a stone in the same spot slowly wears it away, which just means if you keep doing what you're doing you will eventually make some noticeable progress in the long run.
Russian language has an idiom similar to 点滴穿石 - "капля камень точит", literally "a drip grinds a stone", i.e. small but persistent effort eventually overpowers even the most hardy obstacles
I'd bet that many languages have this idiom. I know it in Latin, Italian and German:
- gutta cavat lapidem
- la goccia scava la pietra
- steter Tropfen höhlt den Stein
Literally it's "reply" together with a term for an actor performing a work that they also wrote. And together the phrase is net slang for sock-puppeting.
> 自作自演 (jisakujien ; self-made self-staged ; for example, used for the act of creating a staged situation and then acting as if it were genuine)
The original meaning was a screenwriter-actor performing the script they wrote, which is a perfectly fine thing to do. It can mean 'sockpuppeting', too, and that other use might be more common nowadays, though.
I really like this. At some point fairly early in my life, teenage years I think, I decided that it is a fact that anything I commit to myself that I'll do, I will indeed do. I don't recall exactly when or how it happened, but I do know it's something consciously decided was the case.
As far as I could tell at the time, it had been true for any "serious" commitments thus far, and it's kind of a comforting feeling that if something is in your control, and you decide to do it, it will happen. Having made that affirmation, it because somewhat self-reinforcing, because even when something got hard, I didn't want to break the streak, and thereby... I guess, no longer be able to rely on myself in the same way. I think it's meant both that I'm somewhat careful about what I truly commit to myself to do, but also that I always have extra motivation when I do. (And of course, some degree of after-the-fact rationalization helps too; I'm sure I've consciously let myself off the hook on occasion when the situation changes.)
Anyway, that's a lot of rambling to basically say I think I've been practicing shoshikantetsu most of my life without knowing the term.
I always say this to my kids when they don’t feel like doing some habit: just half arse it.
Another phrase I use is: if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.
I run 12km every day, but some days I don’t get out until the afternoon, like today, and it was 30 degrees C and I could only run 8kms and when I got to the bottom of the hill at the 8km mark I couldn’t run up it and just walked the remaining 4km home.
Imagine if I didn’t even go on the run because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to make it the whole way.
Carrying out the original intent (going on the run), even in a lesser form than the ideal (going slower than usual), helps to reinforce the habit. Ultimately, this is about mastering the art of showing up.
This concept is closely related to the “Two-Minute Rule” proposed by James Clear, of Atomic Habits fame. Showing up consistently, even in small ways, helps build momentum and leads to significant accomplishments over time.
> Having a high say-do ratio has always been important to me
You probably mean a "high do-say ratio"? That is, to complete as many things as you set out to do.
Great story though, it reminds me a bit of how the German language has individual words to describe specific intents and feelings. Of course the German equivalents are far more verbose!
I know I’m being pedantic, but that would be a low ratio.
But I understand the point being made and my pedantry just a peculiarity of English meaning having a strong word order dependence than many other languages.
Just to throw another variable in there, the clause about the ratio is separated from the one about completing things, by the conjunction "but," indicating opposition. So it can be read as something like "I've always prioritized communication" (high say-do ratio, as written) "...BUT, I wanted to" (make a change and) "strategize seeing things through." Probably not what was meant, but plausible and one of the possibilities I considered when I noticed the thing you noticed!
That's actually interesting, because if they'd said low ratio, it would probably have confused people. I think it's math having the strong order dependence; when people say a high a to b ratio, they likely mean a 'good' ratio contextually instead of mathematically high.
I've recently developed a new habit of celebrating my daily accomplishments as wins, no matter how small they may be. This simple practice has had a remarkably positive impact on my mindset. Last week, I wrote down the following:
> When it came to today's running session, I felt already exhausted and unmotivated, my mind constantly telling me that I was not feeling well and nagging me to skip the run.
But I bit the bullet and did it. And what's the result? This was the best run I've had in months cutting my personal best by more than 3 minutes!
Lesson learned: Our mind is pretty bad at assessing our body's capabilities. Don't let your mind limit your possibilities!
Similar to OP's experiment of doing 30-minute productive sessions for 7 days, I create weekly SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). For example
- Goal: Get better at cooking => Action: Try out two new recipes on Tuesday and Thursday.
- Goal: Add comment section to blog => Action: Spend 30 minutes after lunch from Wednesday - Friday
By expressing my goals in this way, I keep myself accountable and on track. I also feel more motivated and focused on achieving them.
Rather than set a lofty goal you're more likely to give up on (leaving you having accomplished nothing), simply look for ways in which you can do/be better than you were before.
I got into four-word proverbs (Yojijukugos), like the one described here, when I was brainstorming some names for a new collection of quad-CPU workstations. Fifteen years ago, such beasts were new to us.
A friend and co-worker gave me a book that was a collection of Yojijukugos for English speakers. I will try to dig it up, it’s in storage at the moment.
But it got me thinking of traditional English-language Yojijukugos, some of which are mentioned in the great comments here. They probably go back thousands of years to Classical (5th Century BCE) Greek Aesop. Who probably didn’t speak 21st Century English.
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- “[killing] Two birds, [with] one stone”
- “[A] stitch [in] time saves nine” — Literally, refers to losing count when stitching a crochet pattern: if you drop a stitch, you have to unwind back to the place before the error, because the yarn has no backspace key. But of course it’s a reminder that doing things at the right time can save a lot of work later.
- “[a] Bad week [for] quitting glue” - Lamenting the wisdom of kicking a dangerous habit of inhaling toxic substances, just when things are getting very strange and stressful. First appeared in the 5th Century BCE feature film “Airplane”, but refers to this past week’s collapse of banks SVB and Signature Bank. (This guy Aesop really knew how to look ahead.)
- “Same stuff, different day” - we’ve all seen this before.
If I say I'll do something; I follow through, come hell or high water.
A lot of folks know this about me, and try to get me to commit to stuff. I'll only commit to the stuff that I plan to complete.
It's interesting how hostile people get, when I mention how important it is to complete stuff. I had a trainer once say "It's really important to know what 'Done' looks like."
I call the strategy 'lowering the bar'. As an old, I now set all my goals to be so small that I have almost achieved them merely by waking each morning.
I like to say that I have lowered my bar so much that I can roll over it while laying on the floor. I am very successful in accomplishing my 'original intent'. Consequently, my life is nearly perfect.
> What I ended up landing on was focusing on making the "original intent" small enough that I had no excuses to not complete them.
This is something I am aiming for myself. It is very common for me to feel motivated and to make big plans to change my life. Then I fail to adhere to my plans and it creates anxiety and depression.
I recently started rising at dawn every single day. When I decided to make the change I limited myself to only that change. Despite wanting to change 100+ things about my life I focused just on this one idea - to set an alarm for sunrise and to get straight out of bed.
It is such an easy premise that I really have no excuse to fail at it.
My current idea is that focusing on a single virtue is a key to a productive life. No more "7 highly effective habits" or "12 rules" or whatever. Just one thing: get up at sunrise. Easy to remember, easy to verify compliance, difficult to achieve.
I think this is great advice in the short term. In the longer term it’s worth evaluating whether a commitment you made only/mostly to yourself is still serving you, or whether the “you” that came up with the commitment was missing some bit of information that you have now.
Like, if the commitment is serving your past self rather than your future self, give it up. You don’t owe your past self anything.
Here is another one, though admittedly I don't know its direct translation.
Shisakanku
It means something like "point and do" (probably completely wrong but should capture the essence) and it's a technique to help avoid mistakes which I found actually works.
Needless to say, I was also weirdly fascinated with it the first time I heard of it.
I write passion project software, and I decided a while ago that I would do at least one commit per day, even if it is just updating todo.txt or writing a one-line comment. It has served me well.
I can't say that I've had a perfect streak, but I've had streaks spanning weeks and months long when I was productive on this project.
This is indeed a commonly used chengyu with similar meaning. But I perceive "初志" as having a connotation of "original" or "initial" intentions, whereas "矢志" simply implies determined wishes or promises without emphasizing the "initial" aspect. While I'm not an expert in Japanese, my understanding is based on the Chinese perspective, and the actual meaning of "初志" in Japanese might differ.
Beyond idiomatic yojijukugo (or perhaps because of it?), 4 mora abbreviations seems to be really common in Japanese. E.g. "debadora" for "device driver" [1]
They are indeed. I participated in phonology seminar in Tokyo U years back, and it was very interesting. According to the prof, Japanese phonology definitely has a tendency to use "moraic foots", that is, units of two mora, as a preferred unit of morphophonologic processes, which then maps to abbreviations of two-word phrases where each of the words get their own foot: deba-dora.
I'd say that yojijukugo are not necessarily directly related, as the readings of the kanji can be one or two mora, so there's some variability in the structure of the readings of yojijukugo.
That being said, people often say that because of moras and foots, syllables have no place in Japanese phonology, but that's not true. Japanese pitch accent patterns (of Tokyo Japanese) depend on the syllabic structure.
Just to make it clear, this doesn't only apply to imported words (although it's probably where it's more common). It works for purely Japanese words too. For example: なるはや (naruhaya) is a 4 mora abbreviation of なるべく早く (narubeku hayaku). Another one: あけおめ (akeome) is an abbreviation of 明けましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetougozaimasu)
This is my first time encounter with this particular 4-character idiom. As a Chinese person, I'm amazed by my ability to comprehend both the writing and the underlying meaning effortlessly. In China, a similar sentiment is more commonly expressed as 坚持初心 (jiān chí chū xīn).
Interestingly, this phrase has gained significance (a buzz world in politics) since Xi came to power a decade ago, that party members should remain steadfast in upholding the original mission of the Communist Party...
Be careful when you use "自強不息" though. I have never seen any native speaker who is also a sane person use it in daily life without sounding sarcastic.
This word does mean what you say, but it probably one of the overused, insincere, and meaningless words in government speeches.
It's like people roll their eyes when tech giants says "make the world a better place" for the past 30 years. But instead of 30 years, this came from 《易经》,which was roughly from 5,000 year ago, and has been constantly used in a similar fashion since then. So imagine how a Chinese speaker will think of it.
There are thousands of 4 letter idioms in Chinese and I believe in Japanese too, a very common game in China is a group of people each say a 4 letter idiom and next person say another that starts with the last letter of the last one said.
If you like this, you might like Nassim Taleb's thoughts on "Skin in the Game", a book by the same name and plenty of discussions and interviews on youtube.
While making perfect sense, it just feels slightly weird due to the order and IMHO less beautiful to its equivalent. In Chinese it’s 不渝 “unshakable” instead of 贯彻(insist)
It seems that 矢志不渝 [1] is a more close analogue in that this exact four-letter form is always used. The Korean version is substantially different too, it's 初志一貫 (초지일관 Chojiilgwan).
As a Chinese person, I perceive "初志" as having a connotation of "original" or "initial" intentions, whereas "矢志" simply implies determined wishes or promises without emphasizing the "initial" aspect. While I'm not an expert in Japanese, my understanding is based on the Chinese perspective, and the actual meaning in Japanese might differ. It's intriguing to see how these nuances can vary across languages and cultures.
I personally analyze 初志一貫 as simply being consistent (一貫) from the beginning (初志), not necessarily retaining the original subject (only implied). I believe this is the most frequent Korean interpretation because 初志 초지 is not a common Korean word (its synonym 初心 초심 is common) and 初志一貫 is probably the only phrase you can find this word.
> I'm currently experimenting with doing 30 minutes of enjoyable, productive activities once a day for 7 days
Carrying out your original intent is sometimes not possible. It's called whisky dick. But who knows; you might end up having a good conversation instead of your planned run. Turn off whatever app you use to manage yourself. Fuck up sometimes. Refusing to go on a run is just as good as going on one, usually better.
Japanese has 熟語 jukugo, which is similar (if I understand the concept of a chengyu correctly): a set phrase of Chinese characters. The famous case are the 4 character set phrases, 四字熟語 yojijukugo, which are mentioned in the article, but there are other kinds too.
Besides that, there is 慣用句 kanyouku, which means just an idiom in general, and isn't restricted to kanji expressions. And 決まり文句 kimarimonku, which means something like a "cliche phrase".
So many are taken over verbatim from Chinese. There are some very comprehensive Yojijukugo (literally just meaning former character compound word) collections on the net like
Sometimes you will have to map between simplified Chinese characters and modern Japanese characters. Easy enough though, since they still look very similar.
