Kazuo Inamori
The way of thinking is a multiplier
And it can be negative
Ikikata, his book on how to live
He reduced a life to a single multiplication. Why only one of the three factors carries a sign.
What actually happened?
The formula: the result of life and work equals way of thinking times enthusiasm times ability. He explains the notation. Ability and enthusiasm run from zero to a hundred; the way of thinking runs from minus a hundred to plus a hundred, the only factor with a sign. So ordinary ability with enormous enthusiasm can outproduce an able but arrogant and idle talent, while a man whose thinking is negative does more damage the abler and the keener he is. He called his own gifts ordinary, and offered this as the arithmetic available to everybody.
The factor with a sign needs examining on its own
Assessment forms are usually all positive scales: ability out of ten, drive out of ten. The formula points at a structural gap. One dimension is not how much but plus or minus: who takes the credit, what he does with rules, how he treats the weak when things go well.
A top performer who grabs credit and pushes blame downward computes to a large negative. His ability is amplifying his direction, and most places keep him until the day it detonates.
An ordinary person's odds sit in the two positive factors
Ability improves slowly and has a ceiling. Enthusiasm and the way of thinking can change today. Kyocera began with neither technology nor money behind it, and those two are what he bet on: effort and direction at full marks, and let multiplication overturn the natural gifts.
The least gifted person on a team, at full marks for direction and effort, routinely passes the most dazzling recruit within two years.
Multiplication means any single factor can veto
In an additive system a weakness is covered by a strength. Not in a product: any factor near zero pulls the total near zero, and any factor turned negative turns the total negative. So the formula is also a running order. Repair the one risking a minus sign first.
Reviewing somebody's stall, do not reach for skills training first. Check whether enthusiasm has fallen near zero. At a multiplier of zero, no course multiplies out.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you are assessing a person, or working out why you yourself have stalled.
Ask first: what is each of the three factors worth here? Is any of them near zero, or carrying a minus sign?
Where it goes wrong: swinging the way of thinking as a moral club to judge people with. Or repairing only the direction and never the ability — positive numbers still have to be large enough to multiply into something.
Lines to keep
Result of life and work equals thinking times enthusiasm times ability.
Ordinary ability burning with enthusiasm beats able talent that is idle.
Same situation, other people are asking
When people near me do well, something in me goes cold.Is he better than me, or just three years earlier?He's a step ahead of me on everything.Am I doing the work, or proving something?Someone is ahead of me · all 14 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.