Personal Kaizen —
Small Steps to the Rescue

Why Personal Kaizen?
So what do you generally do when you confront a tough goal or complex project? Or when you've stalled out on some undertaking and can't pull yourself back on track? Do you give up? Procrastinate some more? Beat your head against a lamp post?

And how are those working out for you? Maybe not so great, right? If you’d like to finally ditch all those lame tactics, have I got a deal for you. Step right up and meet “personal kaizen,” as nifty a tool as the corkscrew. But it never wears out, and it also won't give you a hangover.

Personal kaizen is simply a term sometimes used to describe this process when applied to someone’s life. Since people often associate kaizen primarily with commercial or industrial settings.

Whatever the context, kaizen facilitates improvements, changes, and/or advances, which take place gradually and often fairly painlessly through small steps. Modest and nonthreatening, such steps will allow you to take a “soft” approach to your own goal(s), rather than forcing you to make some kind of grand assault.

That distinction sometimes makes all the difference between a project undertaken and one that dies on the drawing board or perhaps sputters to an untimely end shortly thereafter.

Way Less Complicated
Just think about this for a moment. You live, as do we all, in complex and sometimes troubling and challenging times. Wouldn’t you love it if at least sometimes life could be simpler? As in when you’ve got a job to do that’s got you stumped—for whatever reason.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could do that thing a little bit at a time, instead of trying to blitz it overnight? Or procrastinating because you can’t stand to face it all at once. Or tackling it like you would a nest of cobras. What if you could even enjoy at least part of the process?

You can. And there’s often no genuine reason not to. Just do one thing, take one step in the direction of your task or goal. Then take another step and another...

The small steps of personal kaizen are really the key here, allowing you to tackle at your Own pace projects, goals, even states of being you might otherwise never attempt. By taking little steps, however, you sneak up on your objective—in a sense, doing an end run around whatever has caused your reluctance to act. Sometimes that can be far more effective than a direct assault.

Whether your own challenge be a messy garage, an out-of-shape body, or a job that's going nowhere, take a tip from the turtle. Tackle the goal or problem with the small steps of personal kaizen. And may the Force be with you!

Back to Procrastination and You from Personal Kaizen