Kendo and Engineering

[samurai999]

This is reposted from a Facebook note i made, but this is what i experience everyday as an engineer and i think that is what is hampering me from making that leap in kendo. Thought I'd share it with other people.


I was reflecting not too long ago about what was lacking in my kendo when i went on hiatus for a year and half and when i started up again this past September. Basically, why do i hesitate, why do i think so much, etc, etc, etc. Bottom line... "what is going to prevent my progression in kendo?".

I have an interesting thought (at least to me).. Kendo and engineering mindsets are almost equal and opposite. I have devoted my life to becoming an engineer and have made a bit of room in my free time to practice kendo for exercise, mental discipline and to have a release from work. Here is a quick summary of each profession (or hobby in the case of kendo).

Engineering:

In the aerospace world, picture a bunch of paranoid old men at their computers. That is my world as a stress analyst. Everybody believes in Murphy's law (if anything bad can happen, it will). It is a negative attitude that is taken up, but with the conservative nature of what we do this is a given. To have as much confidence as we can that a part won't break, we are naturally molded to check, recheck, think and rethink. This gives us the confidence to report to our customers that "our product won't break". We can't jump the gun, we can't go on feel unless we have the experience to. We go on what we learned through physics and engineering classes, apply that and call the part good. Then we still hope and pray that it won't break due to something we didn't forsee in either dynamics testing or thermal vacuum testing. We seemingly thrive on fear and doubt to give us confidence to say "our shit works".

Kendo:

In kendo, we have the 4 poisons. The things that taint our minds and prevent us from progressing or achieving... well.. I'll say enlightenment for now. These poisons are doubt, fear, confusion, surprise. In kendo, in order to have a clear mind and to land an ideal strike without hesitation, one element requires that these poisons are gone from the mind.

Conflict:

You almost have to have at least fear and doubt built into your system or you won't be a good stress analyst. Now with kendo begging you to get rid of these poisons, my mind seems to be a jumbled mess. You mokusou to clear your mind, but during keiko, i can feel my engineering instincts creep up on me whenever i practice. It is fear translating into "making sure that my hit is precise" instead of hitting precisely without thinking. I think that is what I'll have to sort out and figure out to progress further into kendo because I think i'm at a road block right now.

[ender84567]

Except you missed the part where management decides to shoot the engineer, shut down the charge number, and ship the product anyway because schedule is king.

[JByrd]

Random thoughts...

Engineers design and create products that are deployed in the field. By the time the product is deployed, the engineering is done. The time for deliberation, fear, doubt, etc. is over. All that is left is the proof of whether the combination of design and material is well matched to the application.

In kendo, the deliberation occurs in the training. We design our training regimen to allow us to work out the fear, doubt, etc. that would hamper our decision making or execution at performance time. If we were an engineered product, we would have no choice but to rely on whatever state our training has left us in once we engage an opponent. Just as in engineering, the time for deliberation, fear, doubt, etc. is over once the "product" is deployed. The catch, of course is that in kendo, we are both the engineer and the product. It's no wonder that problems occur when we try to change tires, turn screws, and tighten bolts while the car is hurtling down the highway at 75 miles per hour.

[hl1978]

Why don't you use your engineering mindset to anaylize what went right and what went wrong after the fact? That would seem to be in line with your test experience and "check, recheck, think and rethink."

[samurai999]

hl1978, see this part

"It is fear translating into "making sure that my hit is precise" instead of hitting precisely without thinking."

The part that is hampering me is overthinking before a hit. In engineering, if something goes wrong after the fact, it means that you have either failed a test or that your predicts are wrong. In other words, the margin for error is small and by then, it is too late. So you have to account for everything beforehand. Like JByrd is saying, you are a nervous wreck before a test or a launch because you have no clue if it will fail or not even though you've done all of the analysis. When things are operating properly, you don't hear a crack or a pop during a test, or don't see a piece of a part or a bolt after a test come off a satellite after a test, then and only then can you relax. The worst thing that can happen is if some senior engineer comes up to you just before a test and says "did you check that in your analysis" and you haven't. So you are on pins and needles all the time. So basically, you are fearful of missing something.. anything..

[Neil Gendzwill]

Some of the technical types I play, you can almost hear the gears grinding. As a certified propeller-head geek myself, I get what you're saying. I often catch myself overthinking, and just try to settle my mind and simply hit whoever's in front of me.

[Anime12478]

As a fellow engineer, I thought I should chime in on this.

I have recently begun to think about Kendo in terms of my engineering background, but in a more positive note. There are various ways that you can try to minimize input and maximize output in things like suburi and footwork by using physics principles with my body and shinai. For example, I've used concepts like geometry, force vectors, and kinetic and potential energy to think about. Engineering really caters to those with the analytical kind of mind, and Kendo is a great way to exercise that by reaching in your bag of tricks.

When it comes to Murphy's Law, I've only used it in a joking matter concerning tests and homework and my chances of passing. When things go wrong, I don't think of it in terms of mysterious forces beyond my control. There are always reasons why you didn't perform up to your standards, so it's a perfect time to use the Scientific Method to find out what needs to improve and how to improve it.

In essence, there's no conflict at all. Just shift your thinking to using your background in a more positive light instead of everything going wrong. If I thought that way at my job, I surely wouldn't have been given the wonderful opportunities I've had. If I thought that way about Kendo, then I wouldn't have taken all these opportunities to practice and test to get to where I'm at.

[hl1978]

As a fellow engineer, I thought I should chime in on this.

I have recently begun to think about Kendo in terms of my engineering background, but in a more positive note. There are various ways that you can try to minimize input and maximize output in things like suburi and footwork by using physics principles with my body and shinai. For example, I've used concepts like geometry, force vectors, and kinetic and potential energy to think about. Engineering really caters to those with the analytical kind of mind, and Kendo is a great way to exercise that by reaching in your bag of tricks.

https://www.dunkindonuts.com/icedcoffeedaymarkets.aspx?cid=8505444&jid=38757748&mc=XX&eid=2707981&cmpid=email_ext_000166

As an engineer myself this is what I work on, thats why I was trying to point out that Samurai 999 already has the tools at his disposal, just as you have. Sure it can be difficult to commit to a design for production, but just looki as keiko as your lab/test time.

[pgsmith]

Being an electronics design engineer, I understand the issues that you are facing. My advice is to simply stop thinking about it and practice harder. Here is how it was told to me by the head of a koryu school quite a number of years ago. I've still got the translator's words written in one of my notebooks ... "the sword arts are not about thinking, they are about doing. You have to work hard to turn off your thinking and simply rely on your doing. This means that you will make many mistakes until you've had enough practice to learn how to do things correctly. This is OK, and is part of the learning. Once you learn how to do things correctly, your doing will get better and better with practice and you won't need to be thinking at all. Taking time to think when faced by another swordsman will get you dead, and then you wont be able to think at all!"

[samurai999]

As an engineer myself this is what I work on, thats why I was trying to point out that Samurai 999 already has the tools at his disposal, just as you have. Sure it can be difficult to commit to a design for production, but just looki as keiko as your lab/test time.

This is one problem and a good point you bring up. Our company (also possibly other companies) are cutting testing because we supposedly have all this data available from previous tests that may or may not fit the situation we are in that we may or may never see. I haven't seen one test at the company i'm currently at. But, it supposedly saves the company money to not repeat part of or most of a test. We really have been turned into desk jockeys. How are we supposed to feel better about ourselves if we don't see a test?

Lastly, all of the old timers in aerospace (the people that are my "senseis" in the engineering world) are some of the most experienced, but some of the most paranoid people I have ever met. Structural engineers (or stress people) make sure that the airplanes you fly in don't fail and fall out of the sky. They make sure the satellites you receive broadband on don't break on the ride up into space. Every engineer (especially structural) talks about Murphys Law where whatever you didn't check will most likely fail on a test. The next engineer will tell you "are you willing to swing over a pit of alligators with that clip?" Another will say that you aren't thinking enough about what could fail on this part. Heck, our safety margins are reported as predicted failure modes or areas most likely to fail. That and we're always on a limited budget.

For example, i had this convo with my lead last year. He pointed out that i didn't do enough checks on a part. I said that we did this on X part on Y program with the same environment and it worked. I was checking it similarly to what i did then. He then said that he didn't believe it and i had to do the checks on the part he wanted anyways. I then asked why do we have to do these checks a part that has gone through the same environment that we know will occur again. He growled at me that "you'll never know what'll happen during a test. You can get lucky but you'll never know." Then he told me to do the check and that was the end of it.

On a big system level test like a static wing test or a dynamic shaker table test, one failure could mean slip of schedule and millions of dollars. Thats why we're always "stressed out" and nervous. its an interesting job and i do enjoy it on the whole, but its one of the toughest engineering jobs that one can have.

Now back to kendo, its easy to say "just block it out", but this culture really gets pounded into all structures engineers i know. Its kinda neat to relate the physics to what we practice, but this is about the thinking engineering mindset vs the doing kendo mindset.

[samurai999]

Now on the flipside, we do have a lot of instances where people think, design, analyze, think, redesign, reanalyze, etc so much that a program can get delayed. (exactly what i was talking about how i think so much that i take a long time to hit) I tried to tell my leads about how they need to just say "we've done everything we can" and move forward and keep going with a certain design, but then i got the "well you don't know what you're talking about" and "i have seen enough failures to not think that way" speeches. So ya.. To make a long story short, its going to be a long uphill battle...

[ender84567]

Some of the technical types I play, you can almost hear the gears grinding. As a certified propeller-head geek myself, I get what you're saying. I often catch myself overthinking, and just try to settle my mind and simply hit whoever's in front of me.

Yep, my problem as well, as my sensei tells me, he can see the gears spinning behind my eyes, less thinking more action. Engineering analytics can be a boon in kendo in fitting the pieces together, but you have to be able to flip the switch, if your are doing in keiko, that is too much, the time to use it is after practice in reflection, and during kihon when making refinements.




When it comes to Murphy's Law, I've only used it in a joking matter concerning tests and homework and my chances of passing. When things go wrong, I don't think of it in terms of mysterious forces beyond my control. There are always reasons why you didn't perform up to your standards, so it's a perfect time to use the Scientific Method to find out what needs to improve and how to improve it.


If thats the way you feel about murphys law then either you havent been an engineer long enough, or haven't done enough actually design and development work. Actual engineering is easy, anyone can slap a design together, understanding what 'can' go wrong, and eliminating as many of the the paths that Murphy can take is 99% of the job. For instance, there is no requirement that my last piece of hardware shut down if an overvoltage condition is applied, in fact it is illegal and physically impossible to apply an over voltage in the final product, but i know some dumbass in test engineering will do it during ESS, so I make sure there is an overvoltage shutdown circuit. This avoids the inevitable 'it failed ESS' emails and wasted time finding out it didnt really fail, but the dumbasses did an invalid test again. This is a known Murphy's law problem, unknown ones are even worse, for instance, you dont know that something will work until you build it and test it. It doesn't matter how many millions of dollars of simulation and cad packages you have. The lab sorts everything out, and in that regard, the dojo is the kendo lab.

Over thinking can be overcome, I do understand the need to run thru 'scenarios' in your head (if i do this he will do this, so i will do this, but then my kote is open maybe i should..... etc), more practice, specifically practice that doesnt give you time to think will help.

[hyuna]

Now on the flipside, we do have a lot of instances where people think, design, analyze, think, redesign, reanalyze, etc so much that a program can get delayed. (exactly what i was talking about how i think so much that i take a long time to hit) I tried to tell my leads about how they need to just say "we've done everything we can" and move forward and keep going with a certain design, but then i got the "well you don't know what you're talking about" and "i have seen enough failures to not think that way" speeches. So ya.. To make a long story short, its going to be a long uphill battle...

Often times people who get to 3rd dan start getting told to slow down. Don't attack so much. Set up, use seme, and build the tension. Your leads sound like they are telling you something similar in spirit. You are trying to "rush" to a production design, but your leads are telling you that it's (you) are not ready yet. You haven't "taken the center" so to speak.

it's impossible to cover all possible failure modes. Everyone knows this. But at some point you have to make a choice and go with it. How do you your leads know when they have reached that point? How do they behave once they get there?

There are two problems that people who think too much need to overcome in kendo, in my experience: 1) thinking instead of doing. 2) Being afraid to act when the opportunity is there. Unless you are playing like a beginner (maybe because you are a beginner or because you are playing with a beginner), you cannot just attack willy-nilly. You have to prepare, you have to engineer the opportunity quickly and efficiently. That means doing the tests that need to be done -- no more, but also no less. It means realizing your design quickly and efficiently, and then being confident enough in your work and preparation that you can execute immediately and without unnecessary hesitation. I don't think this is so very different from how you have to be in engineering. Engineers also don't like to get stuck thinking/worrying instead of doing.

IMO, the problem with "overthinking" is not so much how much you think, but when you are thinking. In all things, including both engineering and kendo, there is a time to think and there is a time to do. The problem appears when people are thinking instead of doing. This is not what is happening with your leads -- they are suggesting specific courses of action that will move you forward. They aren't, at least from what you describe, simply throwing up untestable or impossible FUD and blocking all forward progress.

When you have come to issoku itto and you have center, then you have your prototype, and it is time to test it. It's senseless to keep putting your prototype into a test situation only to immediately take it out to tweak one more thing. Or to put it into the test situation only to sit and stare at it, too worried to actually run the test. Run the test already.

Engineers are in their heart people who build -- that is, actually do -- things. If you were really given to overthinking things, you'd be a scientist, or worse, a philosopher :)

[Batmite]

For me my thinking tends towards analyzing what the oponent is going to do and so I do not react to openings. I also get a busy mind by analyzing my strikes as I run through and so it disrupts the be prepared mentality. Having that busy mind also inteferes with "feeling" the opponent. I have had times where I could feel the oponent and thus I am able to respond and take the advantage. By feeling the oponent I mean sensing how they move; the shift of their weight; when they pause; when they prepare to strike and when they have a mental lapse (Thinking). I have this sensing of the opponent only a few times and that is one of the many things I am working on or as some would call it "The Mind of No Mind". I know my mind goes into overtime when I duel with higher level opponents since I am trying to observe mentally instead of observing wholistically and so I do not get as much learning as I could possibly get.

As a software developer I analyze an issue to try to come up with the best possible solution. My analyzing is to get the best possible solution to what the current environment is like and how to better the environment for future development. I know where I am coding right now I do not need all the redundency and extra hardening of code that some areas require. I can handle 99 percent of issues and just deal with the odd one percent when they happen, which is very rarely.

I know having the thinking coming into play can be an issue but if it can be tamed it can be a boon for engineers and such. We are sticklers for perfection and thus we are willing to refine and redefine ourselves because we know that any errors mainly comes from ourselves since we did not think of something.

[samurai999]

haha i have to agree with ender on murphy's law anime12748. The reason why murphy's law accounts for 99% of all engineering is that everything we do is a prediction or a conservative approximation or guess. As you can extrapolate from this, we hope (and pray) that we have enough conservatism in the analysis that the satellite will survive. Only through testing will we find our true answer and in the case of composites (my field of interest), that is even MORE unpredictable. Each test can result in a failure in a different place EVERY time. For a person looking for a definite answer, you won't find it unless you do enough tests. Since companies are cutting tests to save costs, doing more tests is usually met with either a laugh, a "hell no" or a barrage of whys. Kinda funny how I need more test experience and aerospace companies (at least on the satellite side) are at the point where they don't want to test much anymore and gamble the whole enchilada on component tests, one system level thermal test and one system level dynamics test. hahaha

[samurai999]

hyuna, yes it is impossible to analyze everything, but leads want you to take into account EVERY possibility regardless. Its called CYA (or covering your ass) and an extension of murphy's law. It is a never-ending debate in engineering where some people say that we need to move forward and other people are saying "are you nuts!?". Like what somebody else mentioned before, in kendo if you make a mistake, you try and try again till you get it right. In engineering, you don't get to try and try again anymore. People, especially the customer, don't like failure. Small mistakes they can correct are ok. Big failures, like a member exhibiting a hairline crack, or maybe a panel that experiences a delamination is unacceptable. (see the failure boeing had with its wing box root joint on the 787 dreamliner)

[Anime12478]

Oh, I know about Murphy's Law and experienced it a lot of times. What I was getting at is that I don't let it get in the way of my engineering work and I try not to let it get in the way with my Kendo. In my last Kendo exam, I was really calm because I had a game-plan and executed what I wanted without worrying about all those "what ifs." In my line of work, I've made tons of mistakes with all the small things I've glossed over, but over-worrying about it only makes matters worse.

[rfoxmich]

"Logic is a little bird tweeting in meadow; logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which ... smell bad."

[cesarekim]

Fascinating thread! I'm basically out of the engineering game per se as I run operations now but I AM the ton of shit that lands on people's heads when we get a line stoppage for the same reason twice... We are a very small operation with no engineers but with mechanics and foremen with an average of 25 years plus of experience... When I first set up SPC on the line people were giving me strange looks. Three years since we've gone live with the system (which basically is just a log with manufacturing baselines and an incident report with a failure analysis I always lead) and we haven't had a repeat catastrophic failure on one of our machines for two years... Before I came back to the steel mill I was doing ERP implementations including leading teams which worked on GMP relevant processes for pharmaceuticals. The GMP guys are amongst the kings of negative testing. They do some of the most absurd tests I have ever seen but occasionally find some real doozies. I can relate with the OP's POV and I think it is both something that is trained into us as well as something that is already there before we start or we would never choose the profession...

Going back to kendo, I have an advantage over most people as I started when I was about 11. I completely stopped around the time college came up and didn't start again till I was 30 something. One thing I noticed was that I was REALLY slow off the ball. This wasn't only a physical issue but a mental one. When I was a kid, I would see an opening and just go for it. As a young father, I just couldn't find it in me to do the same thing. I would try to understand why I was being presented a target and by the time I got around to starting the cut, the other guy would have closed the door. This was a truly frustrating time for me. When I talked to my sensei about this, he got a really evil look on his face and said he would fix it. He had me do LOTS of suburi, uchikomi and kakarikeiko every practice. This seems to have helped resolve the issue to some degree.

Basically, he is a true believer of somatic learning. If you repeat the exercises until they become ingrained in your body, you will learn to trust it to react correctly to something that you may not have even realized on a conscious level yet... He's a philophy PhD, btw, but he says that kendo is about action at the lower levels up to about yondan. If your body is trained correctly, you will be able to act correctly. The mental aspects of kendo are important but they remain too theoretical unless your body understands them as well...

HTH

[0746]

There is nothing negative about believing in Murphy's law, especially in an engineering discipline. Actually, I would think there is no need to believe anything in Engineering. Engineering should be systematic. No emotion should be involved. Responding to the quote in the first post, his organization is trying to mitigate the risk of their products breaking within the period it is in service. If it relates to aerospace hardware, obviously the reliability requirement is more than just high...its critical and I would think that systematic and exhaustive analysis approaches become even more important in his field of work than the traditional "oh no, it might break so let my brain release some chemicals related to fear" type of inspection. Maybe he needs training on Quality Management principles. I don't know if it is the case but I strongly doubt there are still things like "sacking the engineer and releasing the product anyway" type of thinking anywhere in the aerospace industry.

As far as kendo and Engineering goes, here in Australia, implementation of continuous development is a core Engineering competency (C1.2) if you wanna move up from the another graduate with experience level to an accredited Professional Engineer (Stage 2).