Kaizen - How This Concept Set Me Up To Be Better

Kaizen (改善) is represented by two Chinese characters meaning "change" and "for the better" respectively. Kaizen is often understood as the process of seeking "continuous improvement" and commonly used as a management concept or approach to improve business processes.

Understanding Kaizen

I was first introduced to Kaizen back in 2020 when preparing for the Six Sigma certification course, which aims to equip practitioners with tools and techniques to facilitate process improvements. I was very intrigued by the versatility of the concept. Not only can it be applied in the world of business, its simplicity and thus multiple ways of interpretation meant that it could be applied to almost all aspects of life.

How I first interpreted Kaizen for my personal pursuits, was to liken it to the 1% improvement rule that one strives towards on a daily basis. The key ideas behind the rule include the self-awareness to reflect on one's daily performance, the discipline to set slightly tougher goals each time, and the commitment to adhere to the practice consistently over time. With the supposedly small and achievable goals completed regularly, those small wins set up a powerful momentum for one to continuously work towards his bigger and more challenging goals.

Personalising Kaizen

Prior to 2021, I roughly knew the importance of continuous self improvement and took an ad hoc approach towards it. More often than not, this meant that I only took the initiative when an opportunity presented itself or when I had the time and mood for it. Progress was intermittent and completely random to put it bluntly. There was no commitment on what specific skills or traits I wanted to work on, nor was I being systematic about it in terms of the approach and timeline.

After learning about Kaizen, the year of 2021 turned out to be an experimental year for me to consciously strive for personal excellence. With adrenaline and ambition entering the new year, I quickly got busy with setting up my monthly goals on a quarterly basis (Image 1). I wanted to use these monthly goals to guide my daily activities instead of being too focused on detailing out plans for each day. Bearing in mind that I should seek continuous improvement, each subsequent month was planned with more commitments and increasing 'difficulty'. Specific examples would be to increase the weight that I was lifting for my exercises (health criteria), meet up with a friend for a catch up session (relationship), and reading 10 scientific papers pertaining to my field of work each month (career development).

Image 1. Initial Quarterly Goal Setting Plans

The first two months went smoothly as the number of commitments and their 'difficulty' levels were somewhat manageable. However, I soon realised that it was getting very difficult to keep up with my monthly goals as the amount of time and resources required was consuming too much of my personal time outside of work. Soon, I started to dread each new day as I had to make sure that a certain amount of work was completed in order for me to have a chance of meeting my monthly goals. The continuous increase in commitment was simply unsustainable and actually backfired by creating a negative feedback loop of stress and disappointment when I was unable to meet my goals.

Like every new journey and venture, there will be challenges and mistakes at the beginning that can be overcome with consistent reflection and necessary tweaks in approach. This led me to revisit what Kaizen really meant for me. What constitutes to continuous improvement, and where else can I draw inspiration from to help me find the right perspectives when setting my goals?

After doing additional research about Kaizen and exploring the different understanding of the concept by productivity gurus, I came to the conclusion that continuous improvement should be a non-striving process. The fact that I had taken a deliberate action towards achieving my goals suffice to qualify as a meaningful effort on my part and I should acknowledge it. Unfortunately in today's society, our consumerist culture driven by globalisation and technological advancement has enabled us to enjoy instant gratification almost effortlessly.

Personally, this has led me to expect that for every action I take or the effort I put into doing something, there should be an immediate observable benefit. Such a perspective is detrimental to life long learning and personal pursuits, especially when you don't see or yield any beneficial outcomes straightaway during your everyday progress. Although what you learnt today may not be immediately applicable, how it could benefit you in the future is very likely going to surprise you in unpredictable ways. Life is about seeking exploration and self discovery, to accumulate knowledge and different experiences that can empower you to create unique value for the people around you when the opportunity presents itself some time in the future.

Getting Better at Goal Setting

With the renewed approach to make continuous improvement a non-striving process, my first realisation was not to approach my goals as a numbers game. To exercise more days a week, to meet more friends or to read more scientific papers. Each activity needed time and I did not take into consideration of my time availability and whether I had allocated enough time for rest. My goal setting approach would have been better if I had first determined how much available time I have for personal pursuits after deducting the time required for work and rest. With an estimate on my available time, it would then be easier to set realistic 'quantities' of commitments each month. Mirroring successful productivity gurus, I now set aside fix time blocks for different activities in my schedule. Regardless of my actual progress during a particular time block, what matters most was my commitment to the activity itself.

Second, I need to set my long term goals first by having my life mission statement(s). Compared to the monthly goals, these mission statement(s) acts as your life's compass. Referring back to your statement(s) constantly puts you back in charge when you feel lost or discouraged. These statement(s) guides you when preparing your yearly or monthly goals and helps you filter the decisions to make when bombarded with a myriad of choices everyday. Start with the big picture before zooming into the specifics. For most of 2021, my monthly goals were standalone. Although I was progressing forward in someway, the goals don't seem to build upon one another towards any particular objective.

Hence, I got to work on setting my life mission statements. Some people advise to keep it simple in one sentence, but I prefer to have one sentence for each aspect in which I want to develop (health, wealth, relationship, career, learning, spirituality, service, leisure). Using career as an example, I want to become a water engineer who is highly adaptable, creative and can help facilitate change within the organisation that I work with. As I had acquired change management skills in 2019 and developed my project management skills in 2020 and 2021, my goal for 2022 was to develop my adaptability and creativity. This led to the research on what are some of the courses that are suitable, and that was how I found out about a Futures Thinking specialisation on Coursera! Briefly, it focuses on enabling learners to put together everyday signals and recent trend developments to simulate future scenarios using multiple tools and framework. Thereafter, evaluate what actions could be done at the individual level to prepare for the future.

Therefore, my overarching goal for career development in 2022 would be to complete the Futures Thinking specialisation and familiarise myself with the forecasting tools and framework to stimulate creativity in my thinking. Likewise, a similar approach was done for the other six aspects in life that I choose to focus on so that all the different life aspects will be worked on in 2022.

Lastly, schedule in leisure! Life isn't just about the serious stuff. There are vast amounts of experiences out there just waiting for you to try and enjoy. Is there a sport that has been on your to-try-list, or an attraction that you have been putting off to visit? Schedule it into your goal setting plans and specify to a time in which it will be accomplished, just like how you would for other (serious) tasks. The anticipation of trying out these planned leisure activities not only keeps you motivated to accomplish the goals that you have set, it also ensures that there are tasks that rejuvenate and reenergise you as you go along. This makes the process of accomplishing your goals much more sustainable and increases your odds of success!

Concluding

Looking back at 2021, it really was a year of figuring out what Kaizen meant for me and how I could apply it in my life to seek positive change. Like most new ventures, there will be mistakes made, tweaks to be done to personalise concepts and their application. It is very important to get going first, gaining that momentum of progress with an attitude of iterative and adaptive change before trying to get better. Although I won't exactly describe the entire process last year to be smooth sailing, it definitely was enlightening and beneficial for me.

I hope this post about my take on Kaizen and the lessons I learnt while applying its concepts has given you some inspiration and ideas in terms of goal setting and personal development!