Kaizen – Sarah Harvey
Small habits to move towards big change.
Yokoten: Horizontal Deployment
Change is infectious, and when success is achieved in one area, you are encouraged to apply the same techniques to another area of your life. This is referred to as yokoten or ‘horizontal deployment,” i.e., copying what works in one area to see if it works in another.
The philosophy of Kaizen is just as easy to apply to individual change as to change in a business.
With many little strokes a large tree is felled
Continuous Improvement
Kaizen is useful for anyone wishing to change their routine. Rather than making any scary leaps into the dark, it is about stepping back and analysing your current habits, deciding what you could improve in your existing life, thinking of new challenges you could start, and then putting into place a plan to change in very small incremental stages. You will hardly even notice the difference in your routine.
Sticking To Your Hobby: Commit Spending Time
Rather than trying to fit in your new activity when you have a small break from all of your other commitments, allocate some set time to your new hobby. Fill out the time in your calendar and set a reminder so that you definitely don’t plan anything else in its place.
Sticking To Your Hobby: Start Off Small
Remembering the Kaizen approach and introducing a new activity into your routine with the least amount of disruption will mean you are more likely to stick to it. It can help to peg the activity to something you already do.
Make An Inventory Of Life
Start by interrogating your habits to make an inventory of your life. Get a piece of paper, and divide it into the major sections of your life. Then, go through all areas of life and ask yourself if you’re doing all you can to be happy in that area.
Dig deep to find out what you really seek. Finish by writing down your biggest aspirations in each category.
Make The First Step Extremely Small
Small changes like these aren’t usually easy to make because we don’t see the rewards immediately. In contrast, it’s easier to give in to a bad habit because they involve things that do reward us instantly.
Kaizen fixes this problem by focusing on changing things in such a tiny way that your brain hardly notices. Don’t discount things that seem ridiculously easy, either. They work!
Review Your Habits And Track Your Progress
Kaizen works best when you use a tracking system.
Doing so helps you see the barely noticeable gradual changes. Your progress can then motivate you to keep going and show you additional areas where you can do better.
Create your own journaling method to track your goals. Bullet journaling is one option that works really well for many people.
Kaizen Is Incremental Growth
In Japanese, the word Kaizen translates to many things, but the main idea is simply “change.” To take advantage of the power of change, you need to start with your habits.
Your brain is always making habits as a way to save power on repeated behaviours. This preserves your mental energy for bigger, tougher tasks. But because it’s so automatic, you might form unwanted habits.
Sticking To Your Hobby: A Writing Challenge
Rather than sitting at your computer with a blank page in front of you, trying to magically be blessed with inspiration, try to do a small writing challenge each day instead. This can be the springboard for a bigger writing project and will get you in the habit of putting words down on the page. There are lots of podcasts and blogs dedicated to writing challenges.
Change For Good
Kaizen is not one-size-fits-all; one person’s experience of it will be entirely different from another’s. The important thing is to listen to your mind and body, then create good habits that work for you and let go of the ones that aren’t doing you any favours.
The emphasis is on continuous improvement, so you should always be thinking about ways you can tweak your routine or simplify your life. Staying mindful of your feelings and behaviours will mean that you will be more aware of when you need to take a step back or if you need a new challenge to get you out of a rut.
Do A Brain Dump
If your brain is still whirring, another idea is to get a piece of paper and write out a ‘brain dump’ of everything that is on your mind from that day. It doesn’t have to be anything coherent or fully formed – just write out everything that is troubling you.
Small Things
Read A Good Book
Just six minutes of reading before bed has been shown to reduce stress levels by two-thirds and promote good sleep. Choose a couple of nights of the week where you read before bed rather than look at a screen and see if it makes a difference.
Wake Up Just Five Minutes Earlier
Try setting your alarm just five minutes earlier and see if it makes a change to how rushed you feel getting out of the door. If this works, try extending this further by five-minute increments each week. Just having a bit more time to get your belongings together can have a huge impact.
The emphasis in Kaizen is always on doing things in small stages and treating the idea of change as an ongoing process rather than a quick-fix ‘to-do list’
The Eating Better Habit
If you want to eat healthier, for instance, maybe you just add one vegetable to your plate each week to start. Once that habit has stuck, you can add more.
Experts recommend this because it keeps you going in the normally difficult early stages. You’re also more likely to stick with your goal in the long term when you follow this method, too!
Your Home
Focus your attention on improving just one room and see the effect it has on your mental state and how you feel about your home. It may spur you on to want to tackle more rooms in the house. And if you live with others, don’t take all of the burdens on yourself; involve your partner, your children and your friends. A stress-free home will benefit them as much as you.
Learning To Say No: Setting Boundaries
Part of practising self-compassion is not over-stretching yourself by doing things that you don’t want to do. Do you find that you are overwhelmed with trying to see everybody and fit everything in? Try to designate at least one or two nights per week for vegging out, doing your washing and cooking something healthy.
Having more control over your own schedule and setting boundaries can feel wonderfully liberating.
Stumbling Blocks
Kaizen is a lifelong commitment to change, so there may be times when your motivation wavers or when you fall on hard times (unless you’re the luckiest person in the world).
Nobody is perfect, and the idea isn’t to achieve complete perfection. It’s about approaching life as an exciting journey and an opportunity for improvement.