The art of Kiazen [改善] can help you to fix anything. In short, Kaizen is the art of applying continuous, bite-size changes to your professional and personal life. The key to Kiazen is incremental changes that can result in measurable benifits to productivity, well-being, etc. We call these micro-improvements.
Breaking Bad : Making Good
Micro-improvements allow a human to eliminate negative behavior without breaking will power. In this case, the process starts with the recognition of a single negative behavior.
The process is simple.
- Identify a problem
- Determine the best outcome of resolving the problem
- Implement a micro-improvement that will lead toward the desired outcome
- Collect data on the micro-improvement over time
Here is an example: you’re spending too much time on facebook and would like to reduce the time wasted on pointless content. The simple solution is to say no to scrolling. Now, you’ll need to collect some data so find and app that logs your time on websites (like RescueTime). Then, set some reminders to avoid scrolling around the time you usually jump on facebook. Check the data. As you notice that your time on facebook has decreased, wait a few more days to hit steady state.
Congratulations, you have successfully implemented a micro-improvement. Now, pick a new behavior to tackle. This is Kiazen.
Measurement : Data : Analysis
In a perfect world, identifying a problem and moving to resolve it would be enough. This is not a perfect world. We need ways to remind ourselves to not fall back into the negative behaviors. In order to figure out what we need to change, it’s best to let the data do the talking. This means measuring our lives and analyzing the data regularly. There are tons of applications that help track,your activity online and off. Download a few. Prosper from your new found self-awareness.
Tracking all your moves may sound overwhelming, this is why we pick off one micro-improvement at a time.
Personal Bots
Setting reminders can be helpful to implementing a micro-improvement. I recommend having a bot involved in your life to help with this. If you’re a slack user, spin up a workspace just for you. Learn how to use slackbot. Add more bots as needed.
Between the built in slackbot plus Trello, IFTTT and Howdy.ai integrations, I’ve created a very nice system of notifications that keeps me on track and out of the doldrums of the web.
Slackbot reminds me to drink more water regularly and spend some time on meditation/yoga daily.
Trello tracks my tasks.
IFTTT sends me articles from my favorite news sources, updates on crypto prices, and let’s me know when the international space station is overhead.
Howdy.ai asks me how my day was. It has become my reason to journal and logs all of my responses really nicely. I use Howdy.ai for all of my teams to script daily/weekly standups as well.
Notification Scheme
It seems everyone I know gets berated by 100s or 1000s of notifications daily.
The biggest time saving micro-improvement I have made was probably the easiest. One rainy day I sat down for 2 hours, downloaded a bunch of retro arcade sound bites (wav format) and then set up custom notifications for all of my apps and some of my most important contacts.
The sounds selected were part of the success here. Coin collection sounds for import stuff. Game over sounds for news notifications. Various other bleeps and bloops cover every set of notifications I receive daily.
Go Kaizen
Forget new years resolutions. Making sweeping changes in your life will break your will. Implement Kaizen and let the micro-improvements change you, sustainably.
Let me know what micro-improvements you’ve implemented or want to in the comments & follow me on some social things. I’m easy to find anywhere online : @ aiBrindley
