One Note at a Time: My Never Stand Still Conversation with World-Renowned Cellist Yo-Yo Ma

Listening to Yo-Yo Ma’s music is good for the soul, and so is having a conversation with him. Yo-Yo is a good friend and neighbor of mine, and he was a perfect person to turn to during these extraordinary times to gain some perspective and make sense of the big picture.

As someone who played for two U.S. presidents, Leonard Bernstein, and Johnny Carson all before the age of ten, Yo-Yo has always carried experience and wisdom beyond his years. I’m so thrilled to share some of it with all of you on this episode of #NeverStandStill, where Yo-Yo discussed why music is a cultural connector, why he always wears a United Nations pin whenever he performs, and how we can emerge from the pandemic with a mind for long-term thinking. He even played a sample of music for me with the help of Petunia, the nickname he gave to his cello crafted in 1733.

Here are some of my favorite takeaways from the conversation:

Connect your work to larger meaning.

Despite all of Yo-Yo Ma’s accolades—which include 19 Grammy Awards, serving as a United Nations Messenger of Peace, and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom—he’s one of the most humble and generous souls I know. It all started with Yo-Yo wanting to turn his passion for playing music into a higher purpose. “The world doesn’t need another cellist,” he explained, “We need a firefighter, we need a doctor…But if I’m to actually have a job as a cellist, then I need to find its value.” So much of how the world perceives Yo-Yo today isn’t just about his musical talent, but also the way he’s used his position to be a cultural connector and humanitarian. I’m sure that Yo-Yo would have always filled our world with beautiful music, but we live in a better world because of his decision to leverage that role for even more.

I feel the same way about business. At a basic level, PayPal could make money by simply providing products for users to manage and move their finances. But we can, and do, contribute so much more to society by stretching further to orient ourselves around a larger purpose: ensuring everyone is empowered to participate in the global economy and improving financial health for people around in the world. If all businesses strive to do the same, we’ll live in a better society.

You can do anything if you take it one note, or one step, at a time.

The first piece of music Yo-Yo learned to play on his cello at age four was a difficult one: Bach’s famous Cello Suite No. 1. Even for a prodigy like Yo-Yo, it’s hard to imagine tackling such a big endeavor at such a young age. But he saw things differently, sharing in an NPR Tiny Desk Concert that “it’s not painful to learn something if you do it incrementally.” He demonstrated to me how he’d learned that first piece one note at a time, asking himself whether each note was the same or different from the measures he’d practiced the previous day. “It's about pattern recognition,” he explained, “and out of patterns…we actually can construct all the information in the world.”

All of us strive to learn new subjects or skills over the course of our careers. And, we all want to contribute to solving some of our world’s biggest challenges. It can feel daunting at first to know where to begin, but if we approach our growth and problem-solving the way Yo-Yo Ma broke down that first piece, we can get one step closer to our goals each day.

Experiencing adversity can actually create a sense of freedom.

During our conversation, Yo-Yo shared with me an important piece of his life experience that isn’t as widely known. When he was 19, Yo-Yo was diagnosed with a severe form of scoliosis that he was told would be life-threatening without surgery. He had a relatively narrow window of time to undergo the surgery he needed, but it coincided with a critical period in his music career that could have been jeopardized by a six-month recovery. While at first he was overwhelmed by the uncertainty of what would happen should he no longer be able to play the cello, he said, “I was at peace by the time of the operation…I thought to myself, ‘I’ve done these wonderful things in music…If I can’t do this, I can do something else.’ That was actually an incredible liberation.”

Then, after recovering fully from the procedure, he emerged with an even stronger sense of freedom—the enlightenment that he was more capable of recovering from setbacks than he even imagined. Now, when he faces the fear of uncertainty or failure, he approaches it with the mindset of, “‘I've been through this, this is part of me. So what are you going to do to me?’ That's kind of the attitude that can deal with the unknown, the insecurity of judgment, of peers, of others.” It was a beautiful example of why we should #NeverStandStill.

I want to thank Yo-Yo for taking the time to join me for this important conversation, and for sharing the gift of his music and his spirit with us. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Leave me a comment to let me know what else you took away from Yo-Yo’s wisdom.