Kaizen: Don't Aim for Perfection, Just be Better Than Yesterday

When a new year starts, we set grand goals like "lose 10kg" or "master a foreign language." However, our brains perceive rapid changes as 'threats' and resist them. The reason why New Year's resolutions fail repeatedly is not that your willpower is weak, but that the goals are too large.

'Kaizen,' which started in Japanese industrial sites and became a worldwide management philosophy, provides a clear answer to this. Kaizen is the Japanese pronunciation of 'improvement' (改善), meaning 'continuous improvement in very small and trivial parts.'

---

I. Core Principle of Kaizen: The Power of 1%

The British national cycling team was a perennially last-place team that hadn't seen a medal for decades. However, when Director Dave Brailsford took office, he introduced a Kaizen strategy called 'Marginal Gains.'

Instead of giving the athletes massive training, they changed trivial things such as:

• Wiping tires with alcohol to increase grip.
• Finding pillows that fit each athlete instead of off-the-shelf ones for more comfortable sleep.
• Identifying the most effective massage gel.

Each was a very small improvement of less than 1%, but as these numerous 1%s gathered, in five years they swept 60% of the Olympic gold medals and became the world's strongest.

---

II. Why is Kaizen Effective?

1. Avoids Brain Resistance: If a goal is too small, the amygdala, the brain's fear center, does not react. "Doing just 1 push-up" is not scary at all, so you can do it consistently.
2. Accumulation of Small Successes: Trivial achievements release dopamine in the brain, increasing self-efficacy—the feeling "I can do it."
3. Law of Compounding: If you improve by 1% every day, after a year, you will be about 37 times better than when you started.

---

III. How to Apply Kaizen to Daily Life

• Reading: Instead of "reading 4 books a month," start with "reading just one page before going to sleep every day."
• Health: Instead of "one hour of exercise every day," start with "doing 3 squats while brushing your teeth."
• Organizing: Instead of "doing a major cleanup," practice "discarding just one piece of trash on your desk before leaving today."

The key is 'starting small enough that it's hard even to fail.'

Conclusion: Great Things are the Sum of Small Things

Kaizen is a philosophy that focuses on the 'process' rather than the result. Don't be disappointed even if there are no dazzling results immediately. Did you make an effort to be 1% better than yesterday? If so, you have already succeeded.

Don't try to move a huge mountain all at once. Start by moving one small stone placed in front of you today. As long as that small movement doesn't stop, time will be on your side and eventually take you to that high peak you dreamed of.