Notes:
+ What is kaizen?
- Using very small steps to improve a habit, a process, or product
- Using very small moments to inspire new products and inventions
+ Categories of kaizen
1. Asking small questions to dispel fear and inspire creativity
- By asking small, gentle questions, we keep the fight-or-flight response in the “off” position. Kaizen questions such as “What’s the smallest step I can take to be more efficient?” or “What can I do in five minutes a day to reduce my credit-card debt?” or “How could I find one source of information about adult education classes in my city?” allow us to bypass our fears.
- The mere act of posing the same question on a regular basis and waiting patiently for an answer mobilizes the cortex.
- Ex: Assuming that your ideal man shares your interests, where would you like to meet him?
- Ex: If I were guaranteed not to fail, what would I be doing differently?
- Ex: Is there a person at work or in my personal life whose voice and input I haven’t heard in a long time? What small question could I ask this person?
- Ex: Every day, ask yourself: What’s one good thing about this person?
2. Thinking small thoughts to develop new skills and habits—without moving a muscle
- Decide how many seconds you’re willing to devote to mind sculpture for this task each day. Make sure you allot seconds, not minutes or hours; the time commitment should be so low that you can easily fulfill its requirements every single day… Increase the length and pace only when the previous stage of mind sculpture has become effortless. If you start making excuses for not practicing mind sculpture, or if you find yourself forgetting to do it, then you need to cut back on the amount of time.
- Ask yourself: What is a tiny step I could make to achieve my goal? Let the question stew for a few days or weeks. When you have an answer, you can use mind sculpture to imagine yourself taking that step.
- Ex: For people with recurring nightmares: I ask them to relive the dream, but with a happy ending. Dozens of my clients have used this technique, and for each one the nightmare or flashback has vanished within a matter of days.
- Ex: What small, trivial step could you take that might improve the quality of your health?
3. Taking small actions that guarantee success solving small problems, even when you’re faced with an overwhelming crisis
- Your first actions will be very small ones—so small that you might find them odd or even silly. That’s okay. It’s helpful to have a sense of humor when you’re trying to change your life.
- This gradual buildup to a steady program is the exact opposite of the usual pattern, in which a person starts off with a burst of activity for a few weeks, but then returns to a comfortable spot on the couch.
- Sometimes, despite your best planning, you’ll hit a wall of resistance. Don’t give up! Instead, try scaling back the size of your steps. Remember that your goal is to bypass fear—and to make the steps so small that you can barely notice an effort.
- You’ll know that the step is small enough if you are as certain you can do it as you are that the sun will come up tomorrow… If you ever feel yourself dreading the activity or making excuses for not performing it, it’s time to cut back on the size of the step… You’ll know you’re ready for the next step when your current step becomes automatic, effortless, and even pleasurable.
- Ex: Toss out the first bite of one fattening snack.
- Ex: Save just one dollar per day.
4. Bestowing small rewards to yourself or others to produce the best results
- The larger the external rewards, the greater the risk of inhibiting or stunting the native drive for excellence.
- When you’re implementing a plan for change but find yourself bored, restless, and stuck, look around for hidden moments of delight.
- Ex: Spend a minute or two each day writing a kind note to tuck into a loved one’s briefcase or a child’s lunchbox.
5. Recognizing the small but crucial moments that everyone else ignores
- We are so accustomed to living with minor annoyances that it’s not always easy to identify them, let alone make corrections. But these annoyances have a way of acquiring mass and eventually blocking your path to change. By training yourself to spot and solve small problems, you can avoid undergoing much more painful remedies later.
- “Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.” Tao Te Ching
+ Kaizen vs. innovation (radical and sudden change)
- “I applaud innovation as a way to make changes . . . when it works. Turning our lives around on a dime can be a source of confidence and self-respect. But I have observed that many people are crippled by the belief that innovation is the only way to change.”
- The small steps of kaizen and the giant leaps of innovation are not mutually exclusive; used together, they become a formidable weapon against even the most profound, complex, and apparently unsolvable problems. When people are up against a thorny problem they’ve been unable to resolve, I generally advise them to focus on kaizen first. Once they understand small steps, they find that they’ve developed an intuitive sense for when innovation is appropriate and how to mix the two.
+ Tidbits of trivia
- A Mayo Clinic study revealed that going to the gym for an hour a day did not reduce the risks associated with sitting for six or more hours a day… The solution to the health risks posed by excessive sitting is not huge and unmanageable—i.e., a full hour at the gym each day—but rather small and doable: getting up from the desk every hour or so.
- One of the most solid predictors of success in life is whether a person turns to another human for support in times of trouble or fear.
Potent Quotables:
The small steps of kaizen disarm the brain’s fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play… Small actions (say, writing just three notes) satisfy your brain’s need to do something and soothe its distress. As the alarms die down, you’ll renew access to the cortex and get some of your creative juices flowing again.
Many remarkable people preferred the word fear to stress or anxiety… Adults, I believe, assume that if they are living correctly, they can control the events around them. When fear does appear, it seems all wrong—so adults prefer to call it by the names for psychiatric disease. Fear becomes a disorder, something to put in a box with a tidy label of “stress” or “anxiety.”
People who struggle with kaizen do so not because the steps are hard but because they are easy. They can’t overcome the cultural training that says change must always be instantaneous, it must always require steely self-discipline, and it must never be pleasurable.
Kaizen asks us to be patient. It asks us to have faith that with small steps, we can better overcome the mind’s initial resistance to change. We do not have control of the timetable for our change—just as we cannot pinpoint the moment we achieved a goal such as learning to drive or ski or play the guitar. We simply have to trust that the mind will develop mastery and obey the instructions we are sending it.
Isn’t slow change better than what I’ve experienced before, which is no change at all?
Ask yourself: Do I need to learn to change anything based on this worry or regret of mine? If the answer is yes, then take a step toward that change. If the answer is no (and often it is), scan the room for an object or person that gives you the strongest sense of pleasure. Focus your thoughts on this item for thirty seconds. This process trains your brain to live in the moment.