So in my last post, I said I was going to spend more time blogging. Blogging specifically about my attempts to improve my life using Kaizen.
I realized that never actually defined what Kaizen was, or how I’m going to use it to do the things that I’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t been able to get done. Yes, a Wikipedia link will give a static explanation, but the important question is “How do we apply it to our own lives?”
Kaizen is a Japanese word means small, regular improvements. I first learned about it from that personal development guru that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with, Tony Robbins. Just like he did with NLP, Robbins took Kaizen and made it his own, turning it into the acronym “CANI” – Constant And Neverending Improvement.
Here’s my problem with CANI – it doesn’t incorporate the idea of small improvements, which are essential to Kaizen. I’m sure Robbins included that in his descriptions of CANI, but I remember taking it as “huge improvements over and over again.”
The book I just finished reading on Kaizen is called One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer. I first learned about this book from Buster Benson’s Health Month (this is me on there if you are interested.) It’s really given me a new perspective on the Kaizen idea.
One of the biggest things that struck me from the book is a story about a woman who was encouraged to march in place for just 1 minute a day.
No one is going to get healthy working out for just one minute a day. But after being told she had to do it for at least 30 minutes a day, most days of the week, and her constantly saying that there simply wasn’t enough time, one minute a day was definitely doable. And as her brain got used the one minute, she slowly started doing it a little longer, and a little longer, until she was at the recommended amount.
From my own experience, I’ve always thought “Come on, what the hell is that? One freakin’ minute? Useless.” I’d try it, and then give up. Because I didn’t see the point.
Or I’d try it, and and within a couple of days I was going for an hour instead of a minute. I was was trying to get to the center of the Tootsie Pop too damn quickly, and breaking my teeth in the process.
Who wants do something if you are going to keep breaking yourself every time you try?
I think the biggest distinction I got from the book was that “You don’t have to quit. If you try to stretch and can’t quite do it, just go back to the minute.”
Since I was doing he opposite (increasing the size of the work until I was crushed under it’s weight), this was interesting idea. Don’t quit. Just keep working toward your goal in smaller chunks.
So contant and neverending improvement doesn’t quite cut it. Because some days, you won’t improve. Some days, you’ll fuck up and fail, sometimes even taking a step (or 10) back.
But in Kaizen, we are taking a long view. And if you can stick to a small change over a long time, it really does add up. And as that willpower “muscle” gets stronger and stronger, it will become easier and easier to do.
And it will become easier and easier to do more. Again, this writing is a good example. I’m up to 5 minutes a day since starting this little experiment a few days back. Right now that doesn’t seem to be a problem, but if it becomes one, with my new perspective, I’ve got no problem going back to four. Or even three – because I’ll get more done, and enjoy it more, doing it for 3 minutes a day than I would doing it for zero.
And as a start, anything is better than zero.
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