Transcribed with Otter.ai
Guest John Maeda
Speaker 1 0:02
Hey. Hey everyone. Welcome to unique ways with Thomas Girard, an audio podcast. We have a legend of legends on today, and in the interest of preserving time, I’m going to skip the intro and just ask that you join me in welcoming John Maeda. Welcome.
Unknown Speaker 0:17
Hello, everyone.
Speaker 2 0:20
Are you ready for 20 questions? Let me try. Okay.
Speaker 1 0:24
Question one, tell me a little bit more about yourself. What do you do?
Speaker 3 0:30
I like to connect together technology, business and design and find new ways for creativity to have a voice. And I love to make things. And as I get older, I like to make more useful things, I guess, with creativity.
Speaker 1 0:51
Nice, that’s very modest. Number two, what’s a key piece of knowledge that makes you different?
Speaker 3 0:58
In my 20s, I knew a person who was a bit different. He was in his 60s. His name was Mitsu Kataoka. He was a professor at UCLA. And I met him through a famous sculptor in Japan, Igarashi takanobu. And I’d loved Igarashi takanoba work, and Igarashi introduced me to mitz, his teacher in the United States, and I was living in Tokyo at the time, and I remembered I met mitts, and I lived in Tokyo, and he was in LA and once they got my like phone number, he kept calling me up. And this is before mobile phones. He was calling my home phone, whatever, and waking me up in the middle of night, and I knew he was different. And so when I was with him in LA we went to lunch. And this is like a 60 year old fella, really short, stocky, carrying a heavy briefcase and walking faster than me. And I said it was so different. So we were sitting there eating lunch, and he said to me, you know, I’m different, right? I said, Yeah, you’re really different, miss. And he said, Well, it’s because I was like you. I was in my 20s. I was rising in my career. Was married, my wife was a medical student, and who bought a house she was pregnant, just saw our whole life together, and she was a medical student, and she came back home one day and said she didn’t feel right, and she went to a doctor. Doctor said she was fine. She went for a second opinion, and the doctor said she was fine too, but there’s a medical student, so had access to other stuff, and discovered that she had terminal cancer. And Mitt said that, you know, after she gave birth, she died a month afterwards, and he said from that day forward, he never thought there would be tomorrow. He would live every day as if tomorrow might not come. And so I came into contact with him, and I realized some people live life like that, like there’s no tomorrow, and it’s a tragic thing, not saying it’s a good thing per se, but it it showed me in my 20s that you have to live life like it’s precious.
Speaker 1 3:25
I love that. Number three, why this? Of all things, why do you do what you do?
Unknown Speaker 3:37
Sorry, did we cut out here?
Unknown Speaker 3:38
No, I’m back now. Yeah,
Speaker 1 3:41
great. So number three is, why this of all things? Why do you do what you do?
Speaker 3 3:49
Well, it gets me excited. I think that I like to do work that excites me. I remember I have someone I knew at Target. Target is a retail chain United States, and there was a time where it was like the place, you know, for creativity and design, and this person who, like oversaw that said to me, and he tells all his people that if it doesn’t make you sweat, it’s not creative. If it doesn’t make you a little nervous, it’s not creative. So I guess it makes me excited is that I’m always a little bit nervous that I might not be able to pull off whatever I’m trying to do. So I try to always be in that zone.
Speaker 1 4:34
I’m excited to hear you answer number four, what does your future look like?
Speaker 3 4:40
Oh, well, my future looks like I’m gonna try to keep on learning new things. Let’s see what that means.
Speaker 1 4:50
Number five, let’s talk about location. What does the notion of place play into what you do?
Speaker 3 4:58
I think that I. Yeah. Now, by the way, I worked remote three years at automatic before the pandemic. I heard about this thing called remote work when I was in the valley, and I thought, wow, I gotta do that. So I did that for three years, and I realized, oh, there’s a lot of pros and cons. So after the pandemic hit, people are talking about things that I had experienced. I think the biggest takeaway when you’re all remote is you aren’t able to sample different cultures directly, and so your understanding becomes narrow because you’re doing it through a computer screen or someone’s tweets or photos or whatever. So I’m a big believer in physical location, and I’m really glad the world’s coming back online, although I know remote work is great for different reasons, and I’m all for it, but I know that I like to get around the world too. So remote hybrid, whatever you want to call it, that’s the good thing.
Speaker 1 5:55
Number six, if you had to start from the beginning, what advice would you give your former younger self?
Speaker 3 6:02
Um, I think that I would tell myself that I’m gonna live to the age I am right now, so maybe you can take, like, an extra hour of sleep and you’ll still be okay. That’d be my advice, get more sleep.
Unknown Speaker 6:22
Number seven, what’s the day in your life? Like
Speaker 3 6:25
in my life is right now, I like wake up at 4am I like to think about whatever I can do that day, and then I get moving a little bit after six, I try to eat a breakfast that has protein in it. I didn’t know until I was, like, late 40s that eating protein is a good breakfast. I was a carbs guy, and I was like, whoa, I’m getting really hungry. So make sure eat the breakfast and jump into work. Do my slacks, my emails, my everything. Talk to people. I like to mentor people as much as I can, because I got mentored a lot. And I also tell people, if you don’t want me here, I’ll leave. So it’s optional. I usually work till seven or so, and then a neat dinner, and I’ll just do some more work, just go to sleep, and hopefully I’ll wake up the next day and get to do more.
Speaker 1 7:27
Number eight, lifelong learning is a popular topic. How do you stay up to date?
Speaker 3 7:33
Oh, really easy. I put myself in situations where I’m really no good at that thing. And the only reason why you have to learn is if you’re doing something you don’t know how to do right, and you stop learning if you’re in a situation that you already know. So I think I’ve always conditioned myself to once I understand something, I feel a little bit concerned that I may be complacent, and so I try to find the new thing that I can learn immediately when that happens
Speaker 1 8:07
just about halfway here. Number nine, what tools do you use? Are you a digital nomad?
Unknown Speaker 8:14
Oh,
Speaker 3 8:16
well, you know to to think I’ll use a whiteboard, like a real whiteboard, not a real time whiteboard by myself. When I’m thinking with others, I’ll definitely going to use a digital whiteboard. You know, depends what mode I’m in. If I’m in solitary mode, I’m either whiteboarding by myself or just typing on my computer. If I’m in IRL mode. I I’ve got, I love whiteboard. So I love whiteboard and IRL or I’ll do a real time board and slack, zoom, etc, teams.
Unknown Speaker 8:56
- How do you deal with work, life, balance?
Speaker 3 9:01
I’m not a good person to ask about that. I don’t really have a good work life balance, and so everyone always tells me, look out. You’re going to burn out. But I’ve been working like this for since I was like, like, kid, so I think I’m okay still. I’m still ticking. Been the hospital once we’re overworking, but after I had to learn that I shouldn’t go to the edge
Speaker 1 9:27
11 if you weren’t doing what you do now, what would you be doing?
Unknown Speaker 9:40
I think I would be
Speaker 3 9:44
a cook. I like cooking. I like arranging foods on a plate. I like choosing plates. I like plating. Oh my gosh. I love plating. I’d probably be a cook.
Unknown Speaker 9:54
Who would you not like to do in terms of your career? I.
Speaker 3 10:00
I like not to get too complacent. So I think that. I think seniority is complex because it feels really good.
Unknown Speaker 10:12
I’m trying to avoid seniority.
Unknown Speaker 10:16
Maybe that’s the answer
Unknown Speaker 10:19
- What’s your favorite word, quote or sentence.
Speaker 3 10:26
My favorite quote comes from Nelson Mandela. When Nelson Mandela passed away, there were these beautiful quotes passed around on the internet. There was one, don’t judge me by my successes. Judge me by how many times I fell down and picked myself up again.
Unknown Speaker 10:48
What’s your least favorite word, quote or sentence?
Speaker 3 10:53
Fail harder. I can’t stand fail harder or fail fast, or whatever. I believe it’s recover fast like nobody wants to fail, recover fast. That’s good.
Speaker 1 11:06
I’ve heard you say that before number 15. If you had to pick one word to describe yourself, what would you choose? Curious?
Unknown Speaker 11:16
What keeps you up at night? I
Unknown Speaker 11:20
missed that one more time.
Unknown Speaker 11:21
What keeps you up at night?
Unknown Speaker 11:25
I wish I knew so I could like sleep longer.
Speaker 1 11:30
Final stress, number 17, what’s a dream you’re chasing? One more time. Sorry, number 17 is what’s a dream you’re chasing?
Speaker 3 11:46
Oh my gosh, I don’t know. I’ve been really lucky in life. I think most of my dreams were realized in my late 30s. So I don’t really have any dreams anymore. I like to help other people’s dreams. That’s what excites me.
Unknown Speaker 12:09
Number 18 is what inspires you.
Speaker 3 12:15
I guess what inspires me is people who are trying to learn and to share that learning. So I think that talking with you, Thomas is is a good thing. It inspires me to know that there’s someone out there who gives a hoot about what I think, and maybe thinks they can convert that into new energy for other people. That’s a very positive thing. That’s a sharing thing. I like the sharing. Any
Unknown Speaker 12:44
advice you’d like to share,
Speaker 3 12:49
oh, don’t listen to senior people. Well, I remember when it was like this or Well, I remember that I did it this way, and just don’t, don’t, don’t listen to them. I you know, like I had these two guys in my lab at MIT who made this thing called processing, which I thought was a bad idea at the time. Thank goodness they didn’t listen to me. They were Ben Fry and Casey Reese, and they just kept making it, and it’s a gigantic open source project. So many people use it. It’s a whole community around computational, media, art and design. So after that, I learned I tell everyone when I tell them to do something, I also always tell them, don’t listen to me no matter what. Listen to yourself.
Speaker 1 13:41
Okay? And number 20, how do our listeners keep tabs on you? Where do we get news about you?
Speaker 3 13:48
You know, Twitter is getting complex because there’s all these like NFT bots coming after me, so I’m not sure what to do anymore. I think LinkedIn is a clean channel. I have a bunch of websites. One is meta.pm, where I just talk to myself. People ask, what are these posts? They’re just notes to myself, mainly Twitter or LinkedIn or where I’m posting stuff.
Speaker 1 14:13
Okay, well, thanks so much for joining us, John, you know I love your story about the quirky guy who kept calling you. That’s an interesting work ethic.
Unknown Speaker 14:23
Hey, Thomas, I’m counting on you.
Unknown Speaker 14:28
Okay, thanks so much. Thank you. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai