Jiro Ono is 85 years old, and he’s dedicated his entire life to his craft - he is considered the best sushi chef in the world. What’s amazing about Jiro and many other craftsmen who are at the top of what they do, is that regardless of their status as the best, they still search for perfection. Perfection is a hard thing to define, and more importantly, a hard thing to achieve. But when you make it a part of your ethos; when you aim for it every day, it does not matter if you get there - what matters is what you’ve made and learned along the path.
”Always look ahead and above yourself. Always try to improve on yourself. Always strive to elevate your craft. That’s what he taught me.”
Yoshikazu Ono on “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”
If you make things, you sit somewhere on the line between someone who works and a craftsman, and the position you take along that line permeates through everything you do. So what you should do, or rather, what I’m trying to do myself, is find a way to achieve perfection in my work - whether that work is writing code, designing the screens for an application or creating a piece of software. Here’s to more craftsmen.