There is a Japanese word I can't shake. Mottainai. It roughly translates as the regret of waste — but that translation doesn't quite land. It is not just waste. It is the feeling that something valuable has been carelessly lost.
Cultivated
Cultivated helps people see their work — and its value — differently.
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It was some time in the mid to late 80s. A café in Bristol, a man sitting alone, and a twelve-year-old with a new notebook writing his first ever note. Thirty years on, that habit became all of this — and now a good part of it goes public.
Organisations often define everything, then define the definitions. Somewhere in the pile, understanding leaves the room. A case for clarity over completeness.
Meeting Notes is Cultivated's weekly letter — Sent Sunday, also in the members' archive. This week: The thread that aids learning.
I bought my copy of Growing a Business second-hand. Inside the cover, in a father's handwriting to his son, was a single line: "To Todd, may this nurture the seed."
We borrowed our language for organisations from the factory floor. But the parts that decide whether good work happens are the parts no machine can see.
We give a great deal of attention to the people we want to be like. The people we'd hate to become are teaching us something too — if we choose to look.
It's 3pm on a Tuesday. The meeting isn't terrible. The job isn't terrible. But a small voice keeps appearing: is this really all of me?
We often use amateur as an insult at work. But the word comes from the Latin for lover — and Vivian Maier's story shows exactly why that matters.
Working life is where you get gradually better at what you already know how to do. On learning as a practice, not an event.