Kaizen - The Japanese philosophy for continuous improvement

Do you often get frustrated at a goal you want to achieve or some improvement you want to make in your life, you take massive action and noting seems to happen, so you get more frustrated and end up giving up or leaving it for a considerable amount  of time, only to get back to it later and realise you lost the momentum you had before you took that frustrated break?

The issue isn't you or the effort you put into achieving your goals, but it's the way you approached achieving them. Goals and improvements come as a product of consistent small improvements that overtime. and although you may get  a lot done in a day by doing sporadic massive action, if its inconsistent you are likely to forgot, give up or lose momentum along the way...

This is why we will be talking today about another Japanese philosophy called Kaizen. Kaizen if broken up into two parts is: kai = meaning  change and zen = meaning good.

which when we use it in an english context more accurately means "continuous improvement"

This is basically summed up as:  The philosophy of making small changes or small improvements everyday.

Why is this important? that seems pretty obvious that if you want to improve on something, overtime you will get better at it because you are constantly practicing or doing the thing you want to improve on right? and yes in a nutshell it is that simple.

The magic of kaizen is that it puts more emphasis on slow consistent and continues growth overtime. where in our culture today, we want instant gratification and instant everything.

So learning a skill like programming for example seems incredibly daunting because of the massive time cost we need to put in, where kaizen says, growth doesn't necessarily come from sporadic action over a short time but consistent and continuous small improvement and learning over time.

Thus it can be easily represented by the old fable of the tortoise and the hare. The hare is indeed faster (this can represent massive action on a new skill we want to learn in a day) (while the tortoise is inherently more slow, (this represents our small actions we take each day). The tortoise eventually wins because he is consistent in moving towards his goal, while the hare gets distracted and goes off track.

We can often when looking at a big goal we want to achieve or, a skill we want to learn, or something great we want to accomplish like writing a book etc. and when looking at the start of it, it may seem so challenging and impossible. However with a focus on slow continuous growth rather than writing 10 chapters in a night, you will win your own race.

Kaizen is a way of life and we all do it to some degree but to truly take advantage of this philosophy we need to ask ourselves where else can we rather focus on small improvements instead of pushing a bolder up a hill...

In short this philosophy rejects the notion of becoming an overnight success which has been plaguing our culture for the past however many years, and puts more value on slow steady growth and improvement which then allows you to take advantage of the momentum that comes with it. 

In order to make kaizen part of your life, you first have to identify what are your goals and where you can and would like to apply the slow growth methodology.

After you have identified your goals or areas of improvement  you wish to achieve, you cant just leave it at that, otherwise there will be no measurable way to see how far you have come or what improvements you have made.

While you have just set goals, the goals themselves will not help you see and track your progress, and on those days you lack motivation which lets be honest is most days, knowing how far you have come will help you pluck up the activation energy to get up and work on your goals.

So in order to track your progress and progress in the most effective way, you need to create a system for yourself where you define what it is you will do to get to the goals you want.

If a systems is the means to track your goals and the plan you follow then goals are your guiding line and direction to where you want your system to take you.

goals = direction

system = actionable steps and progress checking.

when choosing a goal make sure that it passes the SMART goal process: SMART is an acronym broken  down as follows:

S = Specific: is your goals easily defined and can you say it to someone in a single sentence.

M= Measurable: can you measure your progress (this is why we build our system to facilitate and measure ur goals).

A= Achievable/attainable: is the goal you set achievable in the time you set yourself. (If you want to become the worlds best singer in a year, its probably not going to happen).

R = Relevant:  is your goal relevant to what you want to accomplish and the person you want to be? does it aligns with your personal values etc.

T = Timely: do you give yourself enough time to accomplish your goals and how you can break down your goals into smaller more manageable chunks and measure it overtime.

For this to work and for you not to be overwhelmed and stick to these small improvements, you need to break down your goals into its smallest parts ant form there you can build your system around it.

For example if you want to learn how to program but you work full-time and have a life apart from your work which i assume you all do for your mental healths sake, then your system would be then when, where, and how, you are planning on progressing on becoming a programmer over the course of a year etc.

Your system may look like this:

After work and dinner on Tuesday - Friday I will not watch Netflix and instead work on learning to code using Udemy courses from 7-8pm.

This can be further broken down into further sub-steps and so on until you have absolute clarity on how you make small growth each day/week.

So in summary Kaizen is a practical way of building good habits.

When you use kaizen effectively over a period of time, you will eventually start to build momentum.

Now that you have a way to define your goals, lets look at how we can create a self check system to improve our progress. This can be broken up into 4 parts:

Plan - where we defined out goals using the SMART acronym  and create your system.

Do -  when you start to execute on the plan and put the system in place.

Check - at the end of a week month etc,  you see where your system needs work or if there is something that is in the way of growth.

Act - then you put these changes in place and keep going and the cycle never stops.

For example if you realise that between 7-8pm isn't the best time to code because your kids are still up and want your attention, maybe move it till later, etc. Till you find a time that works for you. You might possibly need to move some stuff around and change your schedule, but if your goal is important to you it will be worth the extra effort and time.

Focusing on continuous growth and improvement overtime instead of quick and short term gratification will eventually lead to success and a more fulfilled life.

Side note - because this philosophy is based on small continuous improvement over a long time, we often don't feel that sense of urgency and therefore people will tend not to take this seriously, by perhaps subconsciously thinking: “well if its small improvement overtime maybe if i miss a day or two and come back with massive action and huge amounts of effort the next day that will be balance out”. And thats completely wrong...

The whole system is based on creating habits of improvement in whatever area you choose, and like all habits there needs to be discipline involved for it to stick and for you to see the results.

Just because it seems easy doesn't mean it should not be taken seriously. similarly if this were a complex strategy we will tend to not even bother.

Till next time, bye friends.