In an old interview, Shohei Ohtani mentioned that for the purposes of goal setting, he is an adherent of something called the Harada method of self-reliance and has been since high school. One cannot dispute that he has had great success and Ohtani is known for being meticulously disciplined in his performance monitoring and goal tracking.
History
The Harada method originated from a school in Osaka where Takashi Harada was a teacher and track coach. Harada had taken a trip to Finland where he concluded that Finnish education methods focusing on future visualization were more effective than those focusing strictly on rote memorization. At the time, Harada ran a track program that was ranked near the bottom in Osaka. He would leave behind a program that was among the very best in Japan.
The method Harada taught would become used beyond just his school. In fact, variants of the Harada methodology would become popular in corporate environments to improve people management in companies and get the best out of their employees. Harada has trained upwards of 90,000 people in his techniques and worked with companies such as Uniqlo and Kirin.
The ideas made their way to Shohei Ohtani via his high school baseball coach who had studied under Harada. That is when Ohtani first filled out a 64 Chart (more on this later) based on his then goal of becoming a first overall draft pick. He has filled out several more since according to his old coach Hiroshi Sasaki as well as the Long Term Goal Form that Harada also devised. It apparently caught on with his teammates at Nippon Ham Fighters before Ohtani came to America and he continues to use such methods now with the Angels.
33 Questions Of Self-Reliance
The first key step in the Harada doctrine is assessing yourself on the 33 Questions Of Self-Reliance. After all, the whole Harada ideology is based on the notion of self-reliance. The idea is to gauge how self-reliant you consider yourself to be. The form Harada prescribes is quite simple. It has three columns. The leftmost contains the thirty three traits on which you must grade yourself. The middle column is the number grade you assign yourself between 1 and 10 with 10 being the highest. The rightmost column provides space for you to jot down a quick blurb on what you would do to improve your score in all of these categories.
For the record, I was unable to find any of these filled out by Shohei Ohtani. I looked quite hard but unfortunately had no luck finding it. I would imagine that would have filled one of these in though before proceeding to his now famous 64 chart that we will examine later.
The Long Term Goal Form
Next is a much more involved form to fill in which examines your long term goal in terms of its value to yourself and to society from both a tangible and intangible lens. It also affords you an initial opportunity to break down your main goal into intermediate goals and those which you feel are confidently attainable at your current skill level.
The form then asks you to take a trip down memory lane in listing down reasons for your past successes and failures. Any other points that you may consider relevant can be freely listed down as well. To guide you, the analysis is broken into four major categories: mental, health, skills and life for both successes and failures.
Next comes a jump from past to future in terms of those same four categories. What future obstacles do you foresee in terms of mentality, health, skills and life that can threaten your future goals and what countermeasures do you suppose can deal with those threats?
The next piece involves drawing from your 64 chart (a more in depth look into that soon) and ordering by which ones need to happen first. You will also need to assign an ETA for each. You will also need to assign yourself routines (in order of priority) to follow in order to meet those goals.
Finally, we get to inspiration. Give yourself a mantra, some affirmation to read or repeat out loud when need be. And now, the task is to think beyond yourself. Who are your sincere supporters and what type of support do you need from them? Surely you must have people in your corner.
The 64 Chart
The first known 64 chart that Shohei Ohtani filled out whilst in high school van be found at the ensuing link. This was taken from a Wall Street Journal article.
The 64 chart is one of the templates devised by Harada and it is conceptually quite simple in spite of its initially daunting aspect. It works in the following manner. The main goal goes in the central square. In this case, we can see that Shohei’s central goal was to become a first overall draft pick. In the eight squares around that central goal, we have eight traits that he decided he needed to have in order to achieve this central goal. You see them in blue text in the chart above. These eight traits in turn fill the central squares of the outer eight 9x9 squares. Around these are eight traits or behaviors that he felt needed to be fulfilled in order for him to fulfill these eight subgoals.
Let’s look more at what teenage Shohei had in mind when filling out this chart. Clearly, quite a bit of thought went into this. Okay, so he wanted to be a top draft pick as a pitcher. Well, he realized quickly that he needed to have plus stuff in order to achieve this. Therefore, he jots down goals to develop a plus curveball and the ability to throw 160km/hr (99-100mph) to overpower hitters. He also understood the need to throw strikes consistently and so control and precision are listed in the inner square. Of course, pitchers must also be durable and in order to develop the strength to touch triple digits with the fastball, good physical condition is a must. It is also worth noting that even then he appreciated the importance of the game’s mental aspect and so we see mentality and personality jotted down in his inner square. Finally, he jots down luck. We’ll look at this more closely in a bit. It’s a bit interesting how he understands making your own look.
For the outer squares, he jots down how he can become the eight things he needs to be to be that top pick. In some cases, these are rather intuitive. For example, for the physical aspect, the squares are filled with points on diet and exercise. The mental aspects mainly focus on maintaining a level head and a burning passion for what you do, in this case baseball. On personality, the points he makes revolve around being a pleasant person to work with and be around. This is fundamental of course to being a good teammate and a coachable player who is a pleasure to have in the clubhouse rather than a focal point of drama. Years later, we have seen him evolve into a credible clubhouse leader for the 2023 WBC champions Japan. If you watched the dugout shots during the games or heard his pre-game speech ahead of the final against the USA, you’ll see what I mean.
Now for that square revolving around luck. Here are the eight traits he has: greetings, picking up trash, cleaning his room, using tools with care, positive thinking, positive behavior with judges (I presume he meant his teachers, coaches and so on), being worthy of support and reading books. Clearly, this square was filled in by someone with a strong sense of belief that you make your own luck. Those familiar with the concept of karma will perhaps sense why he would put something like cleaning your room and the parents of baseball obsessed kids would do well to take a copy of this 64 chart and put it in their child’s room. Others are a little more obvious. Reading increases knowledge and knowledge makes it easier to spot opportunity, or luck as some of us would call it. There’s even something of a law of attraction vibe around that point on positive thinking. Thinking more carefully of it though, it is very hard to become anything in a sport like baseball where failure is such an inevitable part of the experience unless you have an optimistic attitude towards life. You fail in every sport but anyone who’s played any amount of baseball will tell you that you will fail a lot more than you’ll succeed, especially at hitting. The best hitters ever even failed to get a hit almost 70% of the time. This sport tests your ability to handle failure unlike any other, believe me.
The 64 chart is actually a quite useful tool for breaking down your major goal into easily identifiable sub-goals which in turn have sub-goals of their own that must be met. We are taught to solve problems by breaking them down, compartmentalizing them into smaller problems that can be solved to meet the greater goal. It does require sitting down and thinking deeply about what needs to happen and what you need to be to meet a certain goal. For example, if I want to be a published author as my main goal I would need to have the following:
Strong writing skills
Vivid imagination
Strong command of the English language (assuming I’m writing in English)
Knowledge of literary movements
Discipline
Self-belief
Organizational skills
Understanding of how publishing works
Let’s break down one of these. What makes a strong writer? Here is what I’d fill that outer square with:
Command of literary devices
Command of grammatical conventions
Experience writing for different audiences
Experience writing different genres and in different formats
Well developed instincts for when to go against convention
Other interests and hobbies to draw upon in your writing
A well taken care of body and mind
Self-confidence to experiment and push boundaries
In about twenty minutes of thinking and writing, I have charted a pretty decent course of how I would go about becoming a published author. By breaking down my goal into key traits and behaviors I’ve found that the goal is actually far less daunting provided I take the time to tackle these subgoals systematically. Now for the record, I already am a published author but for anyone thinking of being the same thing themselves, here is what I feel makes an author.
Daily Diary
The last form we will be looking at is the daily diary template. It serves as something of a daily planner breaking down tasks and reflections by the hour but has several other sections. For starters, it asks for you to jot down your five key tasks for the day. It also requests notes on what you will do in future days. Furthermore, you will be asked to grade yourself from 1-5 on how your life went that day and how your attitude towards it was. You will also need to note challenges faced and good things that happened that day. Also, you’ll jot down questions for your mentor which he or she will duly comment on in the form. Lastly, there’s a section for inspiring words, events and so on.
Harada And industry As A Whole
These days, Takashi Harada has co-written a book with American professor and consultant Noman Bodek, a highly regarded figure in the world of Lean management which is becoming popular in companies across North America. Bodek has worked closely with Harada and taught his methods to American audiences. Those of you who delve into Six Sigma courses will probably encounter much of this material there. The Harada method is often marketed as the human side of lean and as “reducing the eighth waste”, namely unused talent.
Courses can be readily found online offered by various consultants to companies for thousands of dollars to CEOs looking to gain an edge on the competition and get the most out of their employees. Many are no doubt impressed by Harada’s personal resume of having turned a failing track program into a major powerhouse in Japan. With Japan’s recent success at the WBC and Shohei’s schoolboy goals coming back into the public consciousness, there will be no doubt a renewed interest in the system he used to become arguably the greatest player of our time and likely the game’s first $500 million man by this winter.
My Thoughts
I think I am well positioned here to be fairly objective as I had never heard about Harada or his method before last week. My view of the Harada method is generally favorable. I like how structured it is and how it forces you to evaluate yourself honestly and comprehensively without being harsh. It is clearly the product of intense systematic thought and therefore allows an initiate to go through a predictable set of tasks in order to hash out goals and ways to achieve them. I particularly like the 64 chart. It is a very elegant way of breaking down a general goal into subgoals and those in turn into still more subgoals. I find this a very good way of organizing behaviors and tasks and more importantly understanding how they all fit into the big picture. I also like the 33 questions in that they cover a wide variety of behaviors and traits that make up a successful person in any field. Lastly, I quite like that Harada thought to make adherents of his methods look at their goals in terms of what they do for society as a whole rather than through a purely individualistic lens. It adds a greater sense of fulfillment and purpose that often gets lost.
I will say that it would be quite difficult to consistently fill all of the daily forms and routine checklists given the hectic nature of most of our lives. It does help give a sense of structure to life but it would be hard to fill these in faithfully every day in a life of kids, chores, 9-5 jobs that are more like 9-9 and so on. Also, as I look at the 33 Questions form I am a bit unsure as to how to grade for some characteristics, for example capable. I am very capable at some things but useless at others like anyone else so do I grade at a 5/10 or do I zero in that which interests me and therefore grade higher? Another one that I was unsure of how to gauge was “empowered”. I also think a couple may be a bit redundant also. (ex: self-managed and independent, innovative and visionary) In the long term goals form, it can be tricky to fill in for someone who has not seen one, especially the parts around intermediate goals. It can also be tricky depending on what the overall goal is to plausibly date intermediate goals.
Overall, the method is highly useful though. However, like any other goal setting system, it is only as good as the passion and commitment of the user. Shohei Ohtani rode the Harada method to his immense current success because of his immense commitment and discipline towards his craft. The method gave him the needed structure to measure his progress against his greater goals. It allowed him to break down his goals into measurable, datable and ultimately attainable tasks. But in the end, it was up to him to make it happen and he did. The Harada method will gain a massive boost in popularity because we’ve seen what a truly committed adherent can achieve with a well organized, well structured goal setting system.
And now some notes for company executives also looking to leverage the system. The system is geared towards personal goals and not necessarily company goals. It is a system of SELF reliance after all. Also please do remember that no goal setting or performance monitoring system can compensate for a toxic workplace. If there is a culture of fear, poor work-life balance, dysfunctional and outdated management practices etc., the Harada method, or any other method for that matter, would be rendered useless and maybe it is upper management that should be filling out 64 charts with the goal of fixing those issues rather than lower level employees. Lastly, it is also worth remembering that your employees may not necessarily be as passionate about what they do as Shohei Ohtani is about what he does. Sure, they may say and write the right things at performance evaluation time, but their true life goals don't necessarily read as a 30% increase in sales or successfully leading a complex, high revenue generating project. The Harada method relies on the end user being honest about his true, most meaningful goals and passionate enough to really examine these at great length. If your employee's job does not generate a deep enough sense of purpose within them, then don't expect them to follow through with a system that requires a significant time and effort commitment.
The Ohtani wave will make these ideas, previously fairly anonymous outside of Japan, into a fairly popular trend. Already, the Harada method was starting to make inroads into big industry and now, it will become even more popular. However, I must again caution, the method is only as good as you and your level of commitment towards your life goals. If Netflix supersedes your commitment to charting out a course for yourself and keeping yourself accountable for it, you will live a life that reflects this regardless of what you read and experiment with. You can channel your inner Shohei with a system like this to help track your progress towards your goals in your respective field but if you lack the commitment to follow through, you will be disappointed. Perhaps it’s good in a sense that the Harada system is so onerous when it comes to filling forms and so on. Maybe Harada did this to show that becoming the best version of you really is hard work and hard work that nobody sees or acknowledges much of the time. It also reminds us that while the exploits of Shohei Ohtani on the field look effortless, they were really the product of years of continued hard work and dedication towards his craft. Sometimes, it must have felt pointless, but look where he is now. And he isn’t the only beneficiary. It turns out that his initial goal and subsequent goals have culminated in an explosion of joy in Japanese society as they became the masters of yakyu once again.
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