The friend who understood the music

Yu Boya was the finest player of the qin in his generation. Zhong Ziqi could listen to him and hear exactly what he was thinking about.

Boya played about high mountains, and Ziqi said: beautiful, like Mount Tai rising. Boya played about flowing water, and Ziqi said: it floods, like a river running.

When Ziqi died, Boya smashed his instrument and cut the strings, and never played again. He said: there's no one left who understands what I'm playing.

The idiom from that has been in Chinese for two thousand years. Zhi yin, the one who hears.

Most people hear this as sentimentality. What's in it is closer to a specification.

Ziqi wasn't a fan. He wasn't being encouraging. He was giving Boya back his own intention, with enough precision that Boya's skill could improve. He heard mountains and said Mount Tai, not "that was lovely".

That's a much rarer service than praise, and it's the one most people are short of.

Count the people who can tell you what you actually did, rather than whether they liked it. Most people have one, if any. The rest of the room is either generous, distracted, or talking about themselves.

If you have one, pay attention to how often that person's opinion changes your work. If you don't, this week you should find one and ask them a specific question about something specific.

MOJOWAY was built around that question: the value of being heard precisely. A report that returns your own words with shape is the closest thing to a Ziqi that can be scheduled.