Ikigai & Kaizen: The Japanese Strategy to Achieve Personal Happiness and Professional Success (How to set goals, stop procrastinating, be more productive, build good habits, focus, & thrive)

by Anthony Raymond

Ikigai is a Japanese life strategy that emphasizes the importance of finding your “true calling.”

The pursuit of one’s Ikigai is an important journey of self-discovery.

“Lingchi,” is a Chinese term that is commonly translated in the West as “death by a thousand cuts.”

You may have noticed that your most glorious life failures did not result from just one problem. Rather, they originate from a “thousand little cuts”—a thousand little ruinous decisions that come together to create a quagmire.

Hansei is a Japanese method for understanding “what went wrong.” It’s about seeking clarity of thought through careful consideration of past mistakes.

“Kaizen,” — often translated as “continuous improvement.”

Kaizen teaches us how to atomize big obstacles; how to break them down into their more manageable component parts so that we might build up the psychological momentum to overcome each hurdle via consistent daily action.

Ikigai is a Japanese term comprised of two words: “iki” and “kai.” The first half of the compound (“iki”) translates to “life” or “alive.” The latter half (“kai”) means “benefit” or “effect.” So a casual English translation of the term Ikigai might be “that which brings benefit to life.”

Mastery describes our innate desire to become competent at our chosen skill.

[The “flow state” occurs when] people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

Purpose describes our desire to engage in activities that are beneficial or meaningful to ourselves, our family, or our community.

Autonomy describes our desire to lead a self-directed life.

It’s tempting to think that being fully autonomous means that you have the power to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. But electing to merely satisfy each carnal desire that spurts into consciousness is an enterprise that almost always leads to despair.

As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote: It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself (rather than for ulterior motives), that we learn to become more than what we were.

To procrastinate is to voluntarily delay an intended course of action—despite expecting to be worse off for the delay.

Ironically, it is actually the threat of insufficient time (i.e., a looming deadline) that is most effective in terminating a procrastination session.

Finding your Ikigai often entails simultaneously discovering the domicile of your muse as well as the arena in which your toughest battles will be waged.

The most valuable Ikigais are not mere hobbies, they are quests. Quests worthy of a lifetime of daily devotion.

Every morning is a new battle in which victory is only attained via practiced discipline and an hour-by-hour commitment to a righteous cause.

A thousand little problems come together to form a big problem, and your life goals are subject to Lingchi—a death by a thousand cuts.

Once you come to accept the transient nature of your health, wealth, family, and finances, then the inevitable changes to these constructs need not be so surprising when they finally occur.

our dreams die a slow death, instigated by a million little mishaps—most of which we bring upon ourselves.

When it comes to personal development and productivity, Hansei is similarly useful. It prompts us to remain humble in victory, take responsibility for our flaws, avoid the natural tendency to cast blame on others, and learn from our mistakes.

With Hansei, we try to make sense of the long chain of decisions that led to our present life situation (good or bad).

As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote: Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

The ancient Greeks espoused the value of reflective contemplation with the phrase “temet nosce” or “know thyself.”

Socrates expounded upon this concept when he offered that “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

The Germans have a proverb which advises “Selbsterkenntnis ist der erste Schritt zur Besserung,” or “Self-awareness i...

define Hansei as: The practice of carefully identifying, considering, and taking responsibility for past mistakes or shortcomings, followed by the implementation of changes to ensure that these errors do not reoccur.

We begin the Hansei ritual by devoting a block of time to a “Hansei-kai” or “reflection meeting.”

We should note that a Hansei-kai need not necessarily be devoted to a rigorous analysis of your long-term life goals. Instead, you might start by simply pondering the question, “What went wrong today?”

In pondering your circumstances, it’s important to focus on the way in which your own actions contributed to the predicament (no matter how minute).

This is why it’s important to keep a Hansei log—a record of the specific inadequacies that you focused on during your Hansei session. By logging each episode, you will soon reveal patterns in your behaviors.

Remember, the point of this process is not to punish yourself by merely cataloging your many faults. Rather, it’s about learning to recognize and prepare for future circumstances in which you are prone to recidivism.

There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. Merely recognizing your mistakes is only the first step. Correcting them is the next challenge.

Pledging to remain cognizant of our shortcomings and to improve upon our future circumstances is the goal of a Hansei practice.

Principle 1. Avoid self-justification—even if you’re convinced that the problem is not your fault.

Principle 2. Don’t beat yourself up during Hansei

During moments of contemplation, it’s easy to let our inner voice take charge—to hand over our consciousness to the discursive meanderings of our internal narrator.

Hansei is not about beating yourself up. Instead, it’s about making your life better by identifying areas that need improvement.

Principle 3. Accept that painful memories might resurface

Principle 4. Remain humble in success and failure

Charles Darwin once wrote: Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

The Dunning-Kruger effect (as coined by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger) is an oft-cited cognitive bias in which people with a low skill level in a given task tend to overestimate their abilities.

Principle 5. Don’t make the same mistake twice

Kaizen is a goal-achievement technique that encourages continuous improvement via daily incremental progress.

Kaizen Principle 1: Start working toward your goal immediately, even if your first action is laughably small.

What small step could I take today which may (in the long run) improve my situation?

First, we want to break our objective down into its smallest constituent parts—identifying the challenges that will be easiest to tackle first. Second, by surmounting the tiniest hurdles first, we hope to build up psychological momentum. Your lower mind needs to believe that it has the ability to accomplish a smaller goal before it will allow your conscious mind to engage in loftier pursuits.

Kaizen Principle 2: Use a “Continuous Improvement Process” (CIP)