It has been studied that we create brain patterns and those patterns create habits. When you do something once, the likelihood for the next thing to follow the same pattern becomes higher and higher. That is a core principle of Kaizen – Change for Better.

Masaki Imai one of the gurus of the Kaizen Philosophy has written about this. Interestingly, even though Kaizen is about the idea of repeating simple and easy patterns it becomes very difficult to put these principles into practice. I always say Kaizen is simple but it is difficult. It is because once we develop the wrong habits or behaviors it is difficult to make positive changes, especially if we want to do 180-degree changes. We are living in times of immediate gratification making and sustaining those small changes become even more difficult. We are likely to return to where we feel more comfortable (old pattern or old behaviour).

Visiting Japan is quite an experience because you can see firsthand what gradual frequent improvement can produce in the long term. I appreciated how taxis were not as new as you see in other countries yet they were very well maintained, and extremely clean inside and out.

It is important to highlight that those small positive changes work when we feel stuck in our lives. Sometimes we feel extremely tired and overwhelmed. I have learned that those are the perfect times to apply these Kaizen principles.

I am not a morning person and especially when I feel overwhelmed by the decisions that I have to make or the projects I need to complete getting up in the morning could be a hassle. Years ago I will torture myself making ambitious claims about how my morning was going to go the next day. I sounded like: “tomorrow morning, I am going to run for 1 hour then I am going to take a shower, have a healthy breakfast, etc., etc., just to disappoint myself because of course, I didn’t meet my commitments. So now I take a different approach, I slowly get up in the morning, and I begin to take one step at the time. I have created small routines that will help me go through my day accomplishing and conquering those small battles that help me improve in different areas of my life. Don’t take me wrong if you are one of those high achievers that is capable to run for one hour or more, eat a healthy breakfast, etc., etc., and sustain that level of performance over time regardless of the circumstances, then please keep doing what you are doing. Likely, you won’t find this article useful.

But if on the contrary, you struggle in different areas of your life to function, perform, and overcome the day-to-day challenges, then keep reading.

I break down pretty much everything I do into small pieces so that I can complete many of those small tasks easier. Instead of thinking that I am going to empty my inbox after receiving 100 emails, I rather think that I am going to eliminate 10 emails at the time, then I may switch to complete another important project to then come back to eliminate or answer 10 more emails. I keep doing that until those 100 emails are completely removed from my inbox.

The following are important lessons that I have learned about Kaizen that could make a huge difference in making progress towards your personal or career goals. Regardless of what they are:

1.      TRANSITIONS ARE AS IMPORTANT OR MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE TASK ITSELF. I learned that the reason why I didn’t complete or accomplish many of my goals was that I was not making easy to transition from one project or task to the next one. I now dedicate a lot of energy setting up my transitions in the areas that I know are important to complete my projects. Let me give you a practical example. I always wanted to create videos but it was taking me too much to edit those videos. I needed to open my computer, download the videos, open the software, etc., etc., then one of my media mentors (B.C.) taught me how easy was to edit videos using my phone. So I learned how to edit and upload my videos directly into my youtube channel and now I can easily produce videos because I have learned how to quickly edit and upload those videos using my phone.

2.      DON’T LET PERFECTION GET IN THE WAY OF BETTER. One of Mark Twain’s famous quotes was “Continuous Improvement (Aka Kaizen) is better than delayed perfection”. Don’t worry too much about how good your products, services, activities are. Make sure you execute, then repeat making small adjustments, over time your products, services, and processes will become better. Let’s say you want to learn how to use new software. Many times we don’t start using a new SW is because we want to first learn all the features, instead of waiting until that happens, start trying the new SW and learn a few things here and there. Keep playing with it and don’t be afraid of making mistakes. The more you try the more you will learn. It won’t take long before you feel that you have mastered that software that felt scary at first.

3.      BE HUMBLE AND ACHIEVE CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT BY APPLYING CONTINUOUS LEARNING. I am shocked to see how we don’t learn enough from others. We all have the need to be heard which is understandable but you must listen to others if you want to become significantly better at something. Usually, you are surrounded by people that more likely know what you want to learn. Their experience and knowledge could save you a lot of time yet we don’t ask enough questions to learn from the wisdom of others. Of course, this is part of a maturity process but understand that the quicker you mature the faster you are going to move in the direction of improvement. So if you have identified an area that you want to improve, for example, cooking, then you have to identify the person or even better the persons that you can learn from. Then watch, ask question, practice, spend time with them, ask for help, you will be surprised by how much people like to share their knowledge and experience.

In summary…

Kaizen (Change for Better) is a great way to make progress in areas of your life where perhaps you feel hopeless or stuck. Once you feel stuck and hopeless again, remember to apply Kaizen again and break the cycle. The more you learn how to break those cycles the better you will become to anything you set your mind to achieve.