Kaizen and Personal Areas of Improvement
The Kaizen Principal is an effective lean methodology. It eliminates waste or redundancy. This reduction of wastes makes one more efficient and allows you to cut expenses. Kaizen not only improves areas in manufacturing, logistics, or sales but the principal can be used in areas of personal improvement.
How does this work?
I wrote about 2 Powerful Kaizen Tools that has helped me gain financial independence at a young age. The change happened as I broke the larger goal of financial independence into manageable tasks. The tasks followed a sequential order giving me structure and clarity.
My financial independence tasks included:
- Proper insurances (enough coverage for mortgage, income, and college)
- Emergency fund (6 month savings )
- Eliminating debt (mortgage )
- Growing our income (side-hustles, career advancements)
- Investing (401K, 403B, IRA etc)
I do want to point out the order or flow matters when you seek financial independence. It’s very important to follow your plan. Show yourself some grace when the plan does not go as intended. Can you say unexpected emergencies?
Personal area I use Kaizen
Your health matters. Alot. We all have the desire to run every day or hit the gym as often possible. We plan to watch what we eat.
The reality is we struggle making the time and fitting these desires within our daily obligations. When you apply Kaizen to your health you take the larger goal and make it into smaller tasks or micro workouts.
Micro-workouts
Focus on smaller workout instead of the usual 30-60min workout. These micro -workouts include 5min walk around the block or 20 burpees when you take a small break. I’ve not been able to visit the gym and have been able to carry a workout regime at the house.
The workout takes 10 minutes and consists of cardio like jumping jacks, burpees, and running or walking around the park. Another workout you may have not considered is gardening. Consider the carrying, hauling and squatting a gardener does. Plus you soak in the sun.
Your eating habits matter too. One program I tried was Keto diet and was pleasantly surprised with the results. The weight came off rather quickly. I didn’t have to spend hundreds on plans to make keto effective. I consumed more protein and very little carbs.
The idea is to see your health as a workflow or process: healthy eating habits and workouts. Examine the flow and see what habits you can eliminate and make a new habit.
I provided just one example of many areas of where Kaizen can help you make improvements. The reality is that you can apply Kaizen to any area you want.
Here’s How
Assign a workflow to any of your areas. If you can easily assign a workflow to any area then you can apply Kaizen to it. Kaizen works because you can follow the process from beginning to end. This allows you to see what areas need to change or areas that are causing delays, additional expenses, or grief.
Take Away
- Develop a workflow for an area you want to improve
- Break down the area into smaller tasks
- Take these smaller tasks and review for redundancies
- Look for ways to automate or apply force multipliers to the task
- If neither of the above is possible need to evaluate its importance
- And be prepared to eliminate completely
