Personal Kaizen – Practice and Apply
First of all, what you want to do is to start your personal kaizen and make a list of the areas you want to improve. You can make your day more efficient by timing your activities, and you can make your day more productive by reaching the goals you want to achieve day in and day out.
Take a look at what you spend the most time on such as reading emails, taking phone calls or writing reports. Let’s say email takes the longest time to sort. This is another idea of kaizen – to start with the lowliest of tasks. You might consider introducing a folder flow or create an inbox and an urgent box. Set aside time for the urgent mail first and do it several times if there is a lot. Then leave the regular inbox to clear out when you have accomplished other tasks first.
Related: Different Types Of Kaizen
What you want to do is to externalize thinking and “free” yourself for the tasks that must be accomplished in one working day. Even if you set aside other tasks for the following day, you will have the satisfaction that what had to be done was done.
Sometimes as it happens when you are done with the important tasks, you might look over the less important ones and perhaps some of them can be incorporated into one big task which makes it easier to take care of and requires less time.
Related: 10 Steps To Success With Kaizen
Kaizen also focuses on eliminating waste. In a company situation, it is important to have employees set up tool stations so that everything is easily within reach and no time is wasted looking for certain tools. By cutting out steps that waste time productivity can be greatly increased.
Another kaizen principle is standardization when you think about what the best practices are and do this before they are put into motion.
Related: How to Create A Kaizen Culture In The Home
Once you are ready by already visualizing these practices, you can have them implemented almost automatically. Once you see how these practices work then, you can consider if any of them need any improvement and work on that next.
It can be a good idea to adopt one new practice each month. After a while, you will see which of these practices become outdated and move on to another. Make sure you keep track of them and soon you will see that as amazing as it seems there might even be some time each day to sit back and reflect on the working process and catch your breath.
Related: Kaizen Methods and Benefits
You want to have everything running smoothly which greatly soothes the mind and then you can concentrate on the most difficult tasks which might be still causing some problems.
Keep in mind that Kaizen is a system for introducing process improvements and the most important thing is to use these systems to make your life much easier.
You can get more work completed from happy and satisfied employees than from unhappy and stressed employees. Once employees are also helping one another to understand certain processes and everyone is learning as they go along you can be sure that production won’t stop. This will also free you up to concentrate on the tasks that are of most importance to you.
Conclusion
Congratulations on making it to the end of this guide on the philosophy of Kaizen.
You may be surprised to know that the majority of people who start reading a book never complete it. If you’ve made it this far, you’re interested in Kaizen and all the benefits, it has to offer.
Here are some ways in which you can use the Kaizen philosophy to achieve your ultimate goals.
Motivating yourself
There is a saying, “the mind is strong, but the flesh is weak!” Start by associating with people who are of a positive mindset, people who can give you good advice and good information.
Use what you have learned from your mistakes. You can use visual stimuli, like a poster showing a place, or sporting event that you are planning to visit in the future. You can also use a calendar and mark the days off and show how you are progressing towards your goal.
I have used this particular method very successfully myself. If I had not used this method, I doubt very much that I would have achieved my life-long ambition of attending a major world sporting event and traveling the West Indies on a Cruise Ship.
Anticipating obstacles
We all know that is very difficult to get rid of old habits and at the same time, new habits are difficult to keep in place. It is all about keeping active!
It is very important that we realize that we will slip now and then and that we have a plan in place to anticipate problems that may occur. That is life for you, and we have to be prepared for some things not to go as planned. An example of life throwing the unexpected at you is that during the time of planning and saving for my dream holiday, I landed in the hospital for two weeks without an income! I just had to make adjustments and work a little extra time to make up for that loss of income.
Strengthen Any Potential Weaknesses In Your Plan
You need to learn to turn excuses into opportunities. This will make you stronger. There are many things in life that set us up for failure. Financial issues, social interactions, transport and a myriad of other things. These prevent us from reaching our goals if we allow them to. Try and turn them into strengths and come up with alternatives rather than giving up completely.
Be YOUR best self
Stop comparing yourself to others. Just be the best that you can at everything you do. Do things in your time, improving day by day. Have that mental strength to stick it out when you want to quit and know that at the end of the day, you have given your all to reach your goal.
Kaizen’s Philosophy is to get each person to be the best that they can, one day at a time.
