How to Write Better Every Day, Thanks to a Japanese Philosophy
Kaizen is about improving step by step
When I was writing content for brands, there was always something I cared about. It was about time management. I knew my capacity, and I didn’t choose articles that exceeded certain words in one day. But sometimes, I don’t write for weeks, even though my main job is writing.
Could it be because of writer’s block? Or lack of inspiration? No, there was no excuse for me not to write. I’m so obsessed with new ideas, I’m overthinking, and I can’t use my time well. That’s all.
But, the formula was simple. Start by writing 100 words each day. Improve your skills by adding on to this performance in the following days. So write consistently every day. How hard would it be to implement?
Just like me, if you cannot use your time or on the contrary, if you are working hard but not getting efficiency from your work, in this article, I will talk about a Japanese principle that can go to the root of these problems.
Kaizen, a working principle originated from Japan, can help us to achieve our long-term goals, but first, let’s take a brief look at the usage areas and content of kaizen.
How Does the Kaizen Principle Work
Kaizen, whose primary meaning is continuously changing in the right direction, is one of the critical parts of the dynamics of working in Japanese society. A philosophy based on developing work done with constant but small changes.
Although kaizen first developed to help businesses grow, it is also very suitable for application in daily life. There are no significant investments or big steps at the core of the philosophy. From this aspect, kaizen focuses on the process, not the result. Kaizen principle says: “Do something small but effective every day.”
How Companies Use Kaizen
Many well-established brands have been using kaizen as a business principle for many years. Some of these brands are Toyota, Nestle, Ford, and Google.
Toyota works on a continuous improvement method for the production system. Kaizen’s results are measurable, verifiable, and extra efficient, so the famous automotive manufacturer achieves its high quality and low-cost purpose by putting the kaizen principle at the heart of the manufacturing system. It is vital that employees are satisfied with the process as well as to produce the least right products here.
Nestle is the best example of the use of kaizen in the food industry. Nestle uses the simplicity of kaizen. Nestle aims to reduce the time and materials spent with the principle of simplicity it uses in the manufacturing process. Lean manufacturing is utilizing not only to reduce waste but also better to evaluate existing facilities, technology, and corporate capabilities.
How We Can Adapt the Kaizen Writing Principle to Our Daily Lives
It is possible to adapt the kaizen principle not only in business life but also to our own lives as personal development. Rather than being able to make and implement radical decisions, the basis of kaizen is setting small goals that will lead you to the change you want and growing them every day.
I also try to use kaizen in my daily writing process. About a month ago, I started writing in English, which is not my native language. While writing in my native language, I had flexible working hours because I didn’t have problems using language correctly and unleashing my potential.
Here are the steps that can make a positive contribution to your writing routine. We can call this a warm-up tour.
- Set goals before you start writing. Write the topic you want to write formed in your mind. Even if your item is apparent, one day is quite a short time to create a meaningful article. But when you write two initials in detail, step by step, you will have more information about the content of your article. And it is easier to make the necessary additions to a solid-based piece later.
- Be realistic. Be honest with yourself about writing. When you decide to write a 20,000-word e-book, you aim to write it in a week. But have you ever written 3,000 words a day? The way to increase success in a subject is to improve repetitive behaviors.
- From macro to micro one small step. Don’t turn on the computer without setting a specific word count for your daily writing routine. The critical point when determining the Kaizen methods is to focus on the quality of the article. Not quantity.
Now let’s adapt the seven quality control principles of kaizen to our goal of writing better every day.
Day 1: Preparing an Action Plan
I mentioned that we need continuity to write better. While it affects the number of words you use every day, it will also balance the work of the right and left lobes of your brain and ensure that the act of writing becomes a habit. So what else can you do to write better and gain a loyal readership?
You can create a solid but small action plan. Beyond the act of writing an action plan, a weekly daily topic meeting is the setting of research topics. This small action plan is the most extensive-angle step before you start writing.
In this step, you first do research, then determine your niche topic and decide which area you want to specialize in. Your choice of words will be more natural once you learn your field of writing deeper.
Day 2: Start a Comprehensive Research
This stage is where you can improve your writing skills. You don’t start writing anything yet; you just find and save the pieces that match you. What does? You can start your research by taking a look at the work done before you, noting the titles, or even imitating the authors you like. It is difficult to find your own style without imitation. As Kirby Ferguson said, “Everything is a remix.”
New ideas arise when they are mixed. Ferguson explains that this idea he put forward has no original main idea in the world. Be inspired by this idea in your articles. Develop different perspectives from similar materials. Learn the market, read the routines of successful people. Even try asking questions to your favorite writers.
Day 3: Create ”My Past Mistakes” File
Create a folder where you collect your worst articles. The name of your folder “mistakes I made before.” What was the common problem in these articles? Why were they rejected? Try to look at your writing from different angles. Make small but useful improvements.
Look at the sentences and ask them: Are they too general for the title, do you deviate from the main plot, are you telling a story that is too personal? Knowing your mistakes rather than your successes saves you more time.
Day 4: Choose a Niche Topic
The subject you write best will ensure your continuity in the beginning. Write the one you love. By combining your experiences and achievements with scientific data, you can create the original.
When dealing with a niche topic, it’s easier for you to deepen your choice of words and find your writing language. The writing language you address to the reader is also essential. Niche topics create a curiosity in the reader as they are a continuation of each other.
For example, You are preparing a series of articles about only one branch of a broad topic. When you touch on the different components of the same item each week, you can have a loyal audience waiting for your articles, and if you continue, you can reach more people interested in the same topics as you.
Day 5: Disassemble Your Work
This is where you started creating the post. You did your research, and you faced your past mistakes. You determined your niche topic. You are now ready to write. The main point I also apply here is not to swallow a large chunk in one go.
If you try to divide your article into pieces, you will be profitable in many ways, and your work reflects you more. If you divide your article into the beginning, beginning, cause, and effect in a simple way, the first three paragraphs will explain the main words and link sentences to the main topic.
In this section, you can explain your reasons for writing this article to the reader by listing the purpose sentences in the next paragraph. You can also make substantial quotations and references to scientific articles. In the conclusion part, the reader expects you to find solutions to your issues with apparent reasons in this section. Combine your resources in tried-and-true ways. But you don’t do all this in a single day. If you can, I would like you to share with me how you did it.
Day 6: Edit Correctly
If there is something more important than writing the article, it is editing. Typing the material will take less time than editing. You will have the opportunity to show the reader how carefully you are as a writer while publishing your article.
When you finish your article, read your writing aloud before closing the page. Clean up gibberish, unnecessary conjunctions, and phraseology errors. If you check your writing piece by piece every day, you’ll be able to finish editing more efficiently before the writing completed and transformed into an epic.
When you try to correct an entire article of 1,800 words at once, there will undoubtedly be mistakes that you missed. But if you fix it every 400 words, the writing will go cleaner and flowing.
Day 7: Use the Right Solution Tools
If you have established a particular habit of writing every day with kaizen, and if you are observing the process well, then you can start to include some additional improvements in the process.
These may be enrolling in the courses of the experts to improve your writing skills. You must also keep the versions of the tools and programs you use while writing. You should watch creative writing pieces of training and conferences, take notes, and follow your development carefully.
If there are people like me who write in a language other than in their native language, it will be useful to learn the spelling rules in that language. Primarily I see the submission guide articles of the publications in the Medium as an excellent resource for improvement.
Final Words
Until this stage of the article, we have followed some steps inspired by the kaizen principle to write better every day. Of course, since this is a process, hard work, and patience must be carried out together to be effective.
Progressing each day with a little more effort on what you did every day will encourage you to write more to apply what you learned to increase the format and quality of the articles.
I started writing in English. I didn’t expect to write in professional English immediately. I started with a simple topic and sentences. I practiced writing, even 200 words each day. Reading regularly and studying the writing styles of other authors helped me a lot. I’ve learned a lot, especially from Jessica Lynn and Sinem Günel’s articles.
Although I have been writing for years, now I have to play the game according to the rules of Medium. My goal was clear. I want to write better every day to find my writing voice.
Finally, every failure is good news for going on that bumpy road to success. Because if you don’t know where you went wrong, you can’t fix it. Writing is an action that must always repeat before reaching large audiences.