Most productivity methods give you tools to tackle specific projects or to-dos in an organized way.

What Is Kaizen?

Compare: Compare your measurements against your requirements.

Does this process save time?

Does it take too much time?

Does it accomplish the desired result?

Innovate: Search for new, better ways to do the same work or achieve the same result.

Look for smarter, more efficient routes to the same end-goal that boost productivity.

Standardize: Create repeatable, defined processes for those new, more efficient activities.

Repeat: Go back to step one and start again.

Of course, we should point out that Kaizen is not change for change’s sake.

Keep that in mind when you’re looking for ways to optimize your work.

The visiting execs watched Toyota’s process in action and were stunned at how it worked.

The visiting execs, the story concludes, went home and implemented similar procedures.

As rosy as that story may be, those tenets are core to Kaizen as a productivity philosophy.

Similarly, it’s important to make time to look for improvements and optimizations.

How to Make Kaizen Work for You

Kaizen is easy to implement.

Instead, making Kaizen work for you largely involves changing your approach to your work.

Here are a few tips.

First, stay on the lookout for better ways to do your own work.

It takes you out of the trenches and gives you a 10,000-foot view of your work.

Alternatively,use an app like RescueTime to track how you work.

You’ll get valuable insight into how you spend your day, and where your time goes.

Google has since minimized the policy, but the idea is still sound.

That’s slow, continuous, constant improvement.

When you do find a way to make your work more efficient, spend some time investigating it.

Remember,start small, and take small steps.

That’s the essence of Kaizen.

One of the immediate benefits of Kaizen is a sense of ownership and the authority over your work.

Similarly, another principle of Kaizen is to minimize waste wherever possible.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

Title image byTina Mailhot-Roberge.

Photos byJason OX4,Daniel,Ella Phillips, andSonny Abesamis.