Image via Wikipedia
Yesterday I stumbled upon the word kaizen whilst listening to a motivational audio programme by Tony Robbins called Lessons in Mastery. He explained that kaizen is a continuous improvement process used by the Japanese, which we can also apply to our daily lives. It made me want to learn more as I was sure I could apply this to my writing goals. This is also linked to Note 257 – Little Writing Step v Writing Burnout that I blogged about yesterday.
According to Wikipedia, “Kaizen is Japanese for ‘improvement’, or ‘change for the better’ and refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, game development, and business management.”
Wiktionary, the free dictionary explains that kaizen is a noun introduced to English in 1959 and means “a Japanese business practice of continuous improvement in performance and productivity” or “continuous improvement in a general way”. If you look up Continuous Improvement Process on Wikipedia they show the translation of the word which comes from two separate Japanese words: kai meaning change and zen meaning good.
Kaizen is a daily process and if carried out properly reduces the need for “overly hard work” possibly a bit like the lean or six sigma business management strategies that some of you may have heard of. Wikipedia said that Japanese businesses used the ‘kaizen approach’ after the second world war which was partially influenced by “American businesses and quality management teachers who visited the country”. There is also an interesting note which explains how the Toyota Production System was built using the kaizen cycle, where a kaizen is initiated when an abnormality occurs.
My thoughts: I think I’m going to use a kaizen approach to my writing from now on: continually improving every day, even when I have finished my daily blog.
That’s all for today.
Until tomorrow…
Sandra
Freelance Writer and author of My OpenLeaf Journey
For other examples of my work please visit www.sandramadeira.com
Related articles
- It’s a Kaizen New Year (iheartkaizen.com)
- “Kaizen” for 30 Days! (to-live-is-to-create.com)
My Writing Notebook 
There’s a shop in my local town (Rochester) called Kaizen….. I had no idea what it actually meant lol
xxx
Posted by Vikki | January 14, 2012, 7:14 pm