How to Use the Kaizen Approach to Reach Your Goals with Less Burnout
If your goal is like a mountain, this will help you commit to climbing it by 1% each day.
Do you ever feel like you’re working your ass off, but you have no idea if you’re getting any closer to achieving your goals?
You clearly see your goal. And you know you must be taking steps forward because of how hard you’re slaving away. But you still feel far as hell from it?
Your parents and friends ask you what you’ve been doing all day, and you’re not sure how to answer them? Which is pretty wild since you feel like your brain just ran an iron man?
Your goal is this daunting mountain that’s always taunting you to keep climbing until you reach the top. So you suit up for battle and start your hours’ long trek. When you finally take a break, you have no idea where you are. You’re not close to the bottom or where you started, but you’re still miles away from the top.
You feel mild confusion and slight frustration, but you’re determined. You tighten your pack around you and trek on, with even more hustle this time. You choose for your determination to outweigh any doubt that’s creeped into the back of your mind.
Maybe you should stop and ask for directions? Maybe a good night’s sleep will help you solve your way? Did you take the wrong trail?
You’re losing daylight, so no time to pause and evaluate the merit of these important questions. Onward and upward you go.
Some time later, you’re body aches with soreness. Your eyes can barely stay open from exhaustion. You’re practically giddy from delirium. The top must be near. You can feel it. But it’s as if your eyes are playing tricks on you. You look below you and you look above you and there’s no true way to determine if you’re any closer in reaching the top.
You’re beyond exhausted, unable to think and process properly. You’re at your wit’s end. You kick off your hiking boots in fury. You plop right onto the middle of the trail in disappointment. Screw this trail. To hell with this mountain.
You would tell yourself best of luck next time, but you can’t even think about next time right now. You just stare up at the top of the mountain, aching to reach it. Wondering when the next time you’ll strap your boots on and carry on.
Knowing that the next time you do, this will most likely happen again. Because it typically goes this way.
You have enough determination and heart to not quit or give up on your mountain. But you’re not spending the time to actually plan out proper steps. You have no way to track your progress or make thoughtful pivots. The only way you know how to keep climbing is through hard work and sheer hustle. And no one can take being a hard worker away from you.
This leads to you feeling overwhelmed. How can you be working so damn hard and still feel so damn far away from the top of the mountain? And not only that, you can’t tell how much you’ve climbed so far or how much you have left to climb?
Your state of overwhelm is really confusion. You don’t know what steps you’ve taken and you don’t know what steps to take next. You’re overwhelmed by how much more you have to climb, which is all the tasks and work you still have to do. You need to take this entire mountain and simplify your trail to trek up to the top.
You need to climb 1% of your mountain a day.
You need to take the entire mountain and just focus on improving 1% a day. You need to wake up every day and ask yourself — how can I get 1% closer to achieving my goal? And then you need to take that action. Then rinse and repeat.
This is called the Kaizen approach. It’s a Japanese philosophy based on the belief that continuous, incremental improvement adds up to substantial change over time.
“While Kaizen is typically applied to industrial processes like supply chain and logistics, it’s useful in the context of personal productivity and work habits, too. Think of it as an antidote to every ‘go big or go home’ motivational trope you’ve seen in your newsfeed. Kaizen is less about hustle and working more, and more about thoughtful adjustments, accepting failure, and applying learnings in order to work better. “— Melody Wilding
You may be rolling your eyes. 1% a day? Are you kidding? Do you know how long that will take me to reach the top of my mountain? No, no one does. However, being able to actually track all the 1% moves you’ve made and see all the 1% moves you still have to make is an easier map to follow. With fewer pitfalls, roadblocks and random rage fits.
You may be able to throw hard work and hustle and bear your way to the top of the mountain. That’s a possibility. But by the time you get there you’ll be so damn burnt out, stressed, and frustrated you might not even get to enjoy it. That is, if you ever even make it there.
Pillar #1 — Break Down Your Mountain Into Phases
Look at the entirety of your mountain as a series of phases. Phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, and beyond. You don’t need to have every 1% step of every phase. Just the phase you’re currently working on.
When I was in the first phase of starting my coaching business, I looked at the tasks I would need to accomplish in order for Phase 1 to be complete.
A few of them included:
- Write up my coaching contract.
- Write out three niches I’m interested in.
- Solidify my offers and pricing.
- Write 3 articles a week that can be used as content.
- Solidify my discovery call question.
- Have my list of testimonial questions ready, etc.
This didn’t include my website or what I needed to do for my certification. Those things were both parts of phase one, but I included them in their own departments. I had a specific list broken down, just like the one listed above for both my website and finishing my certification. Through this, I could see a very clear, detailed Phase 1.
I knew what some of my phase two items would be. Like set up my group offerings and solidify a marketing schedule, but I didn’t even let my brain drift there. I clearly saw my Phase 1 was and knew what I had to do to make it complete.
As you’re breaking down your mountain into phases, ask yourself — how do I want to feel at the end of this phase? What will make me feel like this phase is complete?
For me, I knew when my coaching certification would be complete, so I wanted to have the basic elements of my business in line by the time I graduated. I knew I’d feel my Phase 1 was complete if I could contact someone and have a very clear explanation of what I do. I’d be able to send them to a website where they could find more information and see if they want to work with me.
Does the website have to be stellar? No. I’d hope that it’s at least ok so it doesn’t deter people, but I have time in phase 2 or 3 to make changes. Do my offers have to be perfect? Nope. But I need something to start with to garner potential business. It’s just a baseline to start. Where I could operate as a professional and then continue improving upon it.
I knew what the pieces of my phase were. I knew what I had to do to chip away at it bit by bit. I could tell that I was improving 1% a day and slowly making my way up the mountain.
Pillar #2 — Set Up a Process for Your Phases
What’s going to be your process for actualizing these phases? What slight adjustments are you going to make in your life to include them?
Do you have a tendency to want to do a complete overhaul of your schedule?
You want to tell your family to go pound sand because you’re going to be locked in a cabin until further notice? Until you’ve through all of your phases and are finally at the top of the mountain? Cute idea, but think again.
That may work for 48 hours, maybe 72 if you’re lucky, but life is guaranteed to get in the way. You need to look at your current life and see where you can fit in these small incremental changes.
You can also set deadlines in your calendar and work backward.
I looked at every item in my Phase 1 and put them in my schedule of where they best fit. Or I’d have a date I’d want them completed by and then fit them in my schedule accordingly. I left room in case things came up so that I could easily move my tasks around and still complete them by the date I had chosen.
Would I have loved to have sat down for 10 hours straight and knocked it all out? You bet your bottom dollar. But that was far from practical with how my weeks typically go.
Doing these small incremental actions allowed me to improve 1% each day. They were easy and attainable, and by limiting the amount I was going to focus on in each day, there was no excuse for why I couldn’t get it done. It was a simple and streamlined process.
You know the pieces of your phase, how are they going to fit into your life? What’s a date you want Phase 1 complete by? How can you work backward to make that happen?
Pillar #3 — What Can Get in Your Way?
Be aware of your roadblocks and what can appear — how can you face those? What’s going to be your plan for moving past them?
Knowing what your potential roadblocks are and how you’re going to face them is a part of the phase and planning process.
How are you going to face burnout? How are you going to face rejection? Or a tech problem that eats your day? How will you adjust your schedule? You need to plan for all that could deter you, which is why if your primary focus is 1% a day it’s hard to get deterred. It’s hard to not accomplish one small step a day.
It’s a lot easier to throw in the towel on a workday that goes awry if you already set yourself up to fail by putting too much on your schedule. You’re rattled at the slightest bit of discomfort or issue that comes up.
If you know what your 1% is, it’s easy to stay motivated and make sure that you can at least accomplish that. Again, whatever work you do doesn’t have to be perfect, but if you get it out of your system and out into the world. It’s easier to re-work pieces or to even start from scratch and have more knowledge as to what’s not working than it does to not have anything started.
Take-Aways
You’re not overwhelmed, you’re confused about your next steps.
Take apart your mountain of work and look at it bit by bit. Organize the bits into phases and only focus on the phase you’re on.
Is the thought of moving forward only 1% a day is agony to you because of how long it will take to reach your goal?
Think about how great it will feel in a month when you’re 30% further along? Or at the end of the year when you’ve moved forward 1% each day?
It’s more than you’ll have if you constantly keep trying to bite off more than you can chew, get burnt out, and discouraged. You’ll abandon the tasks, have to work up the courage to come back to them and feel overwhelmed because you have no idea where to start.
Continuous small actions lead to massive changes and developments.
Commit to moving up your mountain 1% a day. I can’t wait to see you waving from the top.
Maddie is a writer, voice-over artist, and certified life coach. Self-declared boxed wine aficionado. She’d love to hear all your thoughts.
