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

“OPDCA” version—which calls upon the practitioner to employ a continuous five-stage process in which he is to: “Observe, Plan, Do, Check, and Adjust.”

Kaizen Principle 3: Interpret success and failure correctly

A setback is not a reason to quit. Instead, it’s just a data point to be evaluated during our adjustment phase.

You must learn to see obstacles as opportunities for learning, rather than as excuses for capitulation.

Kaizen Principle 4: Use the “Five Whys” technique to identify a problem’s root cause

Kaizen Principle 5: Your actions should be daily, not weekly.

James Clear, author of the New York Times best-selling book Atomic Habits, described the Seinfeld method this way: Don’t break the chain on your workouts and you’ll find that you get fit rather quickly. Don’t break the chain in your business and you’ll find that results come much faster. Don’t break the chain in your artistic pursuits and you’ll find that you will produce creative work on a regular basis. So often, we assume that excellence requires a monumental effort and that our lofty goals demand incredible doses of willpower and motivation. But really, all we need is dedication to small, manageable tasks. Mastery follows consistency.

Kaizen Principle 6: Measure your results ritualistically

An ideal workday is one in which you complete all of the objectives that are under your control.

Difficult human undertakings are often accomplished by a commitment to generate daily output over an extended period of time.

“Naive practice” is what we do when we merely “show up” to work.

“Deliberate practice” occurs when the practitioner is forced to get out of his comfort zone—called upon to display a level of mastery that he has not been capable of in the past.

Ericsson notes: With deliberate practice…the goal is not just to reach your potential but to build it, to make things possible that were not possible before. This requires challenging homeostasis—getting out of your comfort zone—and forcing your brain or your body to adapt… Excellence demands effort and planned, deliberate practice of increasing difficulty.

Pareto Principle dictates that: Roughly 80% of consequences will come from 20% of the causes.

A good leader will perpetually remind his team of their raison d’etre.

People are good at recognizing the value of a finished product. But lousy at discerning the number of steps required for its construction.

Often, relationship difficulties arise because couples are unable to see the world through the eyes of the other. Our mind reveals data to us via a complex tapestry; every yarn is connected to a hatchwork of memories and emotions that color the way we perceive reality. For this reason, healthy relationships are best fostered when we develop a working knowledge of the modus operandi of our own mind, as well as the minds of those near and dear to us.

In The Art of Living, the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 50-135 AD) wrote: Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and cannot control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.

Stagnation is the default state of man.

Johnathan Lockwood Huie wrote: Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.

The current position in which we find ourselves is the inevitable result of the million little decisions that we made along the way. As our lifestyle choices accumulate, they formulate a trajectory that becomes increasingly difficult to alter with each passing year.

As the English novelist Paula Hawkins wrote: The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps.

Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today.

With Lingchi (“death by a thousand cuts”), we learned that undesirable life outcomes do not typically originate from a single cause.

With Hansei (“honest self-reflection”), we learned why it’s so important to take a moment to critically analyze our behaviors and identify areas of our life that could be improved upon.

With Ikigai (“your true calling”), we discussed how the citizens of Okinawa, Japan find their “reason to get out of bed in the morning” by discovering a personal passion project.

With Kaizen (“continuous improvement”), we mastered the art of goal setting via a commitment to daily incremental progress.