I’m one of those people who constantly feels the internal push (and pull) of wanting to be better. I want to improve my skill, efficiency and effectiveness in my profession. I want to be a better man, husband, citizen, leader, and follower. I want to be fitter, faster, and stronger. I don’t need to be the best, but I want to be my best and I’ve found that the benchmark keeps rising higher and higher.
If you’ve experience this internal drive then you’ll understand the depth of frustration and strain that can sometimes come with wanting to improve everything simultaneously! After many months and years of being frustrated with myself, I’ve come to realise that there is a smarter way to improve various areas of my life without burning out my willpower and self-confidence.
Welcome Kaizen!
Kaizen is a Japanese management strategy that translates to “continuous slow improvement.” In business, Kaizen brings a focus to working smarter, not harder, keeping well-being front and centre.
Kaizen in the corporate context, for example on a large factory floor, encompasses ideas of externalising thinking, eliminating waste, standardising and making practices automatic. This corporate strategy can be used in your personal life to bring focus and incremental change to your daily activities. Here are my suggestions for how you can begin to implement a kaizen approach to your day-to-day life.
Begin by writing a list of activities, or behaviour that you want to improve. Drill into each activity, paying attention to what parts of your workload or day take up the most time for the least results. You may find that you waste too much time getting organised in the morning because your resources are in complete disorder? Or maybe you spend way too much time getting distracted by emails or unmanageable paper work? Maybe you allow yourself to get caught up in staffroom gossip which consumes your mental space or you stay back too late at work because you agonise far too much over your lesson plans?
Prioritise these perceived inefficiencies from easiest to change to hardest to change. By beginning to work on the habits or activities that are easiest to change, you will be able to enjoy noticeable benefits straight away. This builds your confidence and can even give you a sense of momentum as you start to see improvements roll in. This will also build your stamina as you attempt the more challenging activities later on!
Work on one task at a time. Whether you’re drowning or flying with your workload right now, be intentional about picking only one habit or activity at a time to improve. Focus on mastering one activity at a time, not on making a whole bunch of half-hearted changes that you don’t adequately understand or wholly believe in.
Where ever possible implement a strategy of continuous workflow. That is, let one activity flow into the next, externalising your thinking to quickly work through simple by time consuming activities. For example, when you sit down to read your emails immediately file or delete each email after you’ve read. This might mean reading your emails with your day planner out, so you can record important information and dates for action items. This can extend to your physical resources too. Create online and offline folder systems for your resources, label and file every physical or soft copy resource that comes across your path, rather than letting a huge pile accumulate on your desk.
Pay attention to your use of time. For example do you waste valuable time and mental energy getting caught up in staff politics or gossip and then find that you have to spend all weekend marking classwork you didn’t get to? Could you block out an hour before or after school each day to close your classroom door and mark classwork, rather than letting it build up. Maybe you could work towards a habit of clearing your desk at the end of every day, so that you can start each day fresh. Get this right and you will be able to do these things with minimal effort.
Be easy on yourself, continuous improvement means small incremental changes! Your small gains are making a difference, so celebrate your wins! Be kind to yourself when things don’t go as well as you’d hoped, you can always tweak your approach and try again tomorrow.
You don’t have to be a Samurai to master the art of Kaizen. How will you use these suggestions in your teacher profession?