Tag: Kaizen method

The difference between good and great

The difference between good and great for most people is not talent or ability – it’s discipline.

Can you find the discipline to do what you don’t want to do, even though you know you need to do it? And the trick is, you can’t just do it once. You have to develop the habit to consistently do what you need to do and to make progress everyday.

Getting even 1% better everyday should be our goal. If we stay in our comfort zone, we will plateau early. But if we keep pushing the limits every day, in 10 years you will be amazed by how far you’ve come.

Jealousy, privilege, and comparison

Before you make a jealous statement, “they’re so lucky that ____” or “it must be easy because of ____”, truly think to yourself the amount of work that that individual put in to get to where they are. There really are not many “overnight successes.”

And for those who inherited wealth or were put in a better position to start than you? Consider yourself the lucky one. You have gone through trials and tribulations that they have not, and it has forged you into the person you are today.

There will always be someone better off than you just like there will always be others worse off than you, yet you don’t consider yourself privileged. Take a step back and look in the mirror. If you’re reading this on a computer, how “lucky” are you? If you live in the United States, how lucky are you? If you have your eyesight and can hear, how lucky are you? Do you have four limbs? How lucky are you? People tend to downplay the “luck” that played a role in how they got to where they are today, yet they emphasize it in others’ success.

“I’m a self-made person” you say. But, in reality, everyone has had help along the way. Some have had more help than others. But you’ve had more help than plenty of others as well. Remember that.

Finally, stop comparing yourself to others. It doesn’t matter where they are or where they’re going. You can’t control that. But you can influence the direction of your life by the decisions you make each and every day. Work to get 1% better every single day and you’ll be amazed by the results in 1 year, 10 years, and beyond.

Competing and confidence

Be confident in your ability to compete. You don’t have to win every time. You won’t win every time. But you can always compete…Try your hardest, have a good attitude whether you win or lose, and make sure you learn from your experiences.

If you don’t like losing, keep practicing. Keep competing. Be a student of the game. What worked well before and what didn’t work? How can you implement what worked and reduce what didn’t to get more consistent results? Become an expert in whatever it is you’re trying to do. With competence comes confidence.

3 yards at a time

I was listening to a podcast the other day when I heard the host make a football analogy for business success. He said, “if you just focus on getting 3 yards at a time, and you keep doing that every single play, you’re going to win the game. But if you keep dropping back to throw a Hail Mary every play, you might get it sometimes, but you’re going to fail a lot more often than not. That is how you’re going to lose the game.” And it got me thinking about how this applies to business, health, and every area of life.

We’ve all seen the people who swing for the fences because of some get rich quick scheme but lose their shirts. Or the people who are very intense with a fad diet, but yo-yo and go from being very strict to not adhering to their diet at all.

Focus on winning just a little bit each day. Start out with your mornings. Try to win your morning today. After that, try to win the afternoon. With your momentum being built, next thing you know, you’ll find that you’ve won the day. And once you string together enough days where you’ve won, you will set yourself up for enormous success.

Opportunity cost and the Kaizen method

There are trade-offs in everything you do. It’s called opportunity cost. Because you are spending your time, energy, or money on one thing, that means that you cannot spend that same time, energy, or money on something else. You do not have an infinite supply, therefore your actions are costing you the opportunity to do something else. You must choose what your priority is and focus on that. Take this into account when making daily decisions. You don’t always have to make the most efficient or effective choice, but if you regularly decide to practice inefficiency and ineffectiveness, it will eventually catch up to you.

One process to combat this is called the Kaizen method. Kaizen focuses on applying small, daily changes that result in major improvements over time. Thought about in another way, if you can improve yourself even fractionally (.5%, for example) each day, imagine how much better you’ll be in 5, 10, or 15 years.

The opposite is also true. If you get just a little worse each day, you won’t be able to tell at first. But after getting fractionally worse over a period of 10 years, you’re going to look in the mirror and wonder what happened to yourself.

Don’t be the person who peaked in high school. Understand that there are trade-offs in every decision you make and try to improve in something each day.