The concept of Kaizen has been discussed on the internet endlessly, I am perhaps adding to the noise but I offer my take on the dicussion.

Just in case this is new to you. The idea is to look to continually try to make small improvements that compound over time into significant changes. This could be a production line or more commonly talked about is how it can be applied to an individual.

Things To Be Aware Of

You can think of it as an optimisation technique where you gradually walk up the hill to get to a new highs in productivity. The study of optimisation theory informs us about the limits to this. To avoid local maxima you "kick" the system and shock it into a very large discontinuous change to maybe move to a different hill with a much high peak. I don't often see this discussed when people talk about Kaizen.

An example might be a person who works a shop assistant. They earn around minimum/living wage. A Kaizen idea might be to work hard and get promoted to the next level up and gain a tiny increase in wage or just wait for the government to increase your the minimum wage. If you are having a good life this is a good strategy.

If a higher income is desirable then Kaizen applied in this way is limiting. Instead a discontinuous change like starting an online course to learn video editing, coding or other higher valued skills that open up more lucrative paths for earning money. Perhaps night school to learn carpentry or get the qualification to get into a STEM course at university.

All these examples require you to move to a different hill, that is a discontinuous change. Once you are on a new hill you can apply the Kaizen method and keep on improving by one percent as often as possible.

Alas I cannot offer advice on when a big change is required, it is something you will probably know you have to do with some self reflection. I suspect many people who discuss Kaizen are already roughly in the right place when they start applying it.

I also think over the short term that is a year or less it results are over sold. Often people use the exciting prospect of attempting to get 1% better each day or each week. They then talk about how this can compound into something really significant over the period of a year. There are two problems with this idea.

• It gets increasingly hard to achieve 1 percent improvements. When you are not good at something improving is relatively easy. After a while it just get too difficult to keep those gains happening.
• The time frame is too short. If you are looking for transformative changes in 1 year, you will need significant changes that will include at least one but more likely many discontinuous jumps to new hills.

Still Reading? Let's get Positive.

After all that you might thing I'm a bit negative on the idea of Kaizen. Actually I am a huge fan. It embodies the "Turn Up and Get Good" mentality so often needed. A rephrasing of this is consistent deliberate practice.

Over time period greater than a year the results can be incredible.

I Am Thinking How To Apply This.

This is a blog about me so we have reached that part of the post. Stop reading if you want to, it might go down a bit from here on in.

I want to apply this to my personal life as much as possible, but not become a slave to it. In 5 years time if I am a very different person that is time well spent particularly if I look back it the process with joy.

Applying Kaizen to the wrong things wastes time. Avoid going the wrong way, You need a map.

For that we need our old friend clarity. Now I don't really know where I want to be in 5 years time, it is actually exciting to have the future not fully planned out. Over the past year I have found it useful to have a good plan for 90 days and then less clear plans for a years time.

I don't write those goals down though. Does that mean I am a little less clear or committed to the goals. Is the my first Kaizen change?

I have never really been able to just have one goal usually I have one in each area of interest. I then jump around. Some just take time, like investing, while others benifit mostly from consistant attention but are limited in duration like exercise. Here is the rought approach I plan to take:

1. Gain clarity on short term goals
2. Write down goals
3. Work on goals
4. Kaizen, refine the process. Make notes on changes.
5. Every few weeks make notes on progress. Go to 3.
6. At end of the 90 days interrupt this process, review goals set new ones and repeat

The important thing is to enjoy steps 2,3,4,5 as that's where the time is spent.

I am deliberately not specifying goals here I have read telling people about them can give you a dopamine hit and make you less likely to achieve them. I may do Kaizen updates and from the changes you may be able to infer many of them.

I also expect I will refine my process somewhat.