Kaizen and the Art of Thinking Small
Small isn’t exactly in the modern vocabulary. Big dreams and ambitions are encouraged. Big egos are tolerated if not outright celebrated. It’s little surprise then that a concept as simple and as meek as Kaizen would go largely unnoticed.
What is Kaizen?
To put it simply, kaizen is the art of thinking small. It’s about looking for small ways to make improvements and taking small actions to implement them. It was originally conceived of as a way to help post-war Japanese businesses quickly get back on their feet, but I would suggest that its applicability extends far beyond the narrow confines of the business world. There’s nothing dramatic about it. It’s not flashy, nor does it offer grandiose promises of how it will revolutionize your life. It’s just a small, simple idea that is effective precisely because of its smallness and simplicity.
Consider that when we face problems and challenges in life, we tend to look at them as a whole. Let’s take weight loss as an example. Say you want to lose 10, 20, 100 lbs….the amount of weight doesn’t matter. It’s easy to fixate on the goal and become discouraged (especially in the face of setbacks) rather than to consider the small steps that might make that goal possible.
When we set our sights on the big picture, the humbling reality soon sets in that no matter how high our motivation, we often simply can’t accomplish these kinds of things in a day. They’re too big. Indeed, every big problem you’ve ever faced, and every challenge you’ve ever undertaken has been a matter of a great many smaller steps.
Each of those small steps represents a moment in time where some small decision was made and some correspondingly small thing happened. You put on your shoes, or you didn’t. You ate that thing or you didn’t. You wrote nine words or you wrote no words.
But whatever it is that you did, why did you do that? What happened to make you choose this over that? Or to do this while neglecting that? Were their environmental factors? Was it something someone said? Is there something in your life that you perceive as missing? On the flip side, what small things have proven effective for you in allowing you to take some action when you otherwise might have simply stood still?
Kaizen helps us be present to the moment. It’s a way of saying to ourselves, “this is what is possible right now.”
The idea here is to examine yourself, your situation and your motivations. Look for the opportunities. It’s easy to tell ourselves that one tiny thing won’t make a difference, but kaizen is all about small changes over time, and 20 tiny things may make all the difference. Learn to identify obstacles and take a single small step towards overcoming them. Take whatever lethargy you feel and make a modest, almost humiliatingly small gesture of resistance against it.
If you want to write, don’t worry about the writing for starters. Start by thinking about the writing. Imagine yourself doing it for 30 seconds, or 10 or 2. If you hate cleaning, but your life and your space is a mess, start with taking care of a single item and be proud of that regardless of what anyone else may think or say. If you have a difficult relationship with a particular person, start with thinking one good thought about them.
There’s no shame in this. Remember that smallness is precisely the point. You shouldn’t be beating yourself up for what you can’t do. If you are, it’s an indication that you need to think smaller still. Go as small as you possibly need to until the action becomes effortless, or at the very least, possible. If you’re able to take the very next step in the same way, then do so. Sometimes momentum is on our side. If not, then be encouraged by the step you took and consider what next small step might be possible.
Some might suggest that this approach is a path to nowhere. It’s too slow they might say…not forceful enough. They would say perhaps that what’s required is bold action. Yet how common is the image of the person who started some goal with great energy and enthusiasm only to burnout, falter or otherwise come crashing down a short while later?
They didn’t deal with the realities of being a human being with varying levels of motivation, energy, and enthusiasm. They assumed, as many of us do, that the desires of the moment would extend into the future unimpeded. This is almost never the case.
In this regard, it’s important to realize that the person who takes 100 steps slowly still travels further than the person who takes 50 steps quickly and then stops.
An image of a certain tortoise and hare might be forming in your mind right about now.
But ultimately, this isn’t about competing with others. It’s about making a way for ourselves when no way seems possible. Or to come at it from another angle, recognizing what smooths our path and embracing that, one small step at a time.
It’s worth remembering that relative to the scale of our dreams, ambitions, challenges and certainly our lives as a whole, the moment is always by its nature, small.
We may do well to meet it there.
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