Here’s how you can implement tiny changes every day to make massive improvements to your life – with Kaizen!
Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy meaning that if you make small continuous improvement every single day, you can dramatically improve the quality of the things you do.
- To improve your fitness, begin with a tiny goal, say 5 mins of brisk walking on day 1. Add one minute per day (so small you will hardly feel it), but by day 26 you will be up to 30 minutes of activity, which is a significant increase in a very short period of time.
- If there is a subject that you are struggling with, use Kaizen to focus your attention and time on it. Stick to short but steadily increasing bursts of study on one particular concept or a paper you need to read. Use a timer, turn off your phone and close your email. Following this method, you will get an incredible amount done over-time. The trick is to hit it daily.
- Kaizen can be used to make big changes to your diet. For example, one month you could cut back your added sugar consumption by reducing by ¼ teaspoon per coffee/tea/bowl of cereal that you consume until you hit zero. Substituting a piece of fruit or a serve of vegies for a slice of toast or a serve of chips once a day has big impacts over the course of a season.
- Have you always wanted to learn to meditate? Don’t start with an hour-long app… start with a small, 5-minute guided session once a day, then try twice a day, then slowly up the length of each meditation until you hit your sweet spot.
- If you want to start habit stacking a few new things into your schedule, try Kaizen-ing your sleep schedule. Go to bed 5 minutes earlier and then set the alarm five minutes earlier. It will seem like nothing but by the end of two weeks you will have adjusted your sleep schedule by 1 hour and 10mins. That’s a nice block of time to devote to your own goals before your day and its demands kick in.
