Attention: Do Everything Like It Means Everything

A pork pie factory, a Japanese cabinet maker, and the unexpected pleasure of paying attention.

There’s a story I keep coming back to.

A fisherman is sitting on a beach when a businessman approaches him with some advice.

You should buy another boat, he says.

Then another.

Build a company.

Expand the fleet.

Make a fortune. Yada yada.

Retire early.

"And then what?" asks the fisherman.

"Well then you can spend your days fishing."

I've always liked that story.

Not because ambition is bad. Far from it.

But because it reminds us how easy it is to spend our lives postponing enjoyment.

From childhood, we're taught that happiness lives somewhere ahead of us.

Study hard to get good grades.

Get good grades to get into university.

Go to university to get a good job.

Get a good job so you can have a good life.

Everything points towards the next thing.

The problem is that life has a habit of happening in the meantime.

The Pork Pie Factory

When I was younger, I spent one summer working in the jelly room of a pork pie factory.

My job was getting pork pies out of their baking tins and lining them up to have the jelly squirted into their tops.

For twelve hours a day.

Okay, I didn't love it.

But I kinda enjoyed it.

I became interested in the process.

I experimented with different techniques. Different rhythms. Different ways of coaxing the pies out of their tins. I wanted to see if I could get a little quicker. A little smoother. A little better.

A few summers later, I found myself folding clothes in a warehouse.

The same thing happened.

I became interested in finding a better way.

A cleaner sequence.

A smoother rhythm.

Looking back, neither job bored me. I enjoyed the simplicity of the goal and the process of trying to do it a little better.

The more attention I paid, the more interesting it became.

The more interesting it became, the faster the time seemed to pass.

The Back of the Cabinet

At Fivefootsix, my old design agency, we had a quote painted on the studio wall:

Do Everything Like It Means Everything.

I've always taken that line to heart, even if people think I'm a little crazy.

There's a Japanese approach to craftsmanship I've always admired.

The idea that even the back of a cabinet, destined to face a wall, should be made as beautifully as the front.

Nobody will see it.

Nobody will praise it.

But that's not really the point.

The point is that care has value even when it's invisible.

Not because someone else might notice.

Because you notice.

Because the way we do things shapes our experience of doing them.

Attention

I've started to think that attention might be one of life's great pleasures.

Not achievement.

Not status.

Not arriving.

Attention.

Being fully absorbed in whatever is in front of you.

Maybe that's why certain people, businesses and makers stand out.

You can feel it when someone cares.

You can feel it when someone is paying attention.

Looking back, I think this idea sits at the heart of a lot of the decisions we've made at Art of Ping Pong.

The business wasn't born from a grand plan.

It started because I wanted a ping pong table and Caroline didn't want one in the house.

What followed was years of making, experimenting, collaborating and solving problems.

Not because we were chasing some distant destination.

Because we genuinely enjoyed the process.

Because the work itself was interesting.

The older I get, the less convinced I am that fulfilment is waiting somewhere in the future.

I think more often it's found in the thing right in front of us.

Sometimes that's a business.

Sometimes it's a conversation.

Sometimes it's a game of ping pong.

And sometimes, unexpectedly, it's a pork pie factory.