by Jason Thomas
Image by Juha Nieminen
Click to view A Japanese management strategy called Kaizen roughly translates to
"continuous slow improvement." In the corporate world, it's an efficiency and defect-
proofing system often used on factory floors. But Kaizen emphasizes the well-being of the
employee, working smarter, not harder and developing best practices so that workers don't
have to think. As such, Kaizen is an ideal approach to improve one's personal workflow.
Getting Things Done methods work well within the practice of Kaizen. Kaizen would be the
overall strategy, and GTD a collection of tactics for process improvement. To apply GTD in a
Kaizen way, you might choose a few related ideas from GTD that will help you immediately
in areas where you need the most work. Then you'd implement one tactic every week for a
month. You'd work on that one tactic 43 folders, say for a week, consciously using it and
thinking about it. After a week, you'd have it down to the point where you don't have to think
about it anymore. The next week, you'd move on to the next device while continuing to use
the one you just mastered.
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That way, you're continually improving your process, painlessly, without having to interrupt
much of your present workflow or take anything new by storm. There's the thing with
Kaizen: you have to stick to it. It doesn't necessarily require a huge amount of discipline
front loaded, but you have to hold on to each small gain you make. Since each step is a small
increment, that's easy enough to do.
To start your own personal Kaizen, sit down and make a list of the areas you want to
improve. If you're not sure where you can make your day more efficient, try timing your
activities during a representative day. You may be surprised at the result you might be
wasting a great deal of time in places that you don't expect. Check out Gina's previously-
featured Time Map for a good way to track where your day goes.
Say you find three areas you can streamline: you spend a lot of time processing email, taking
phone calls interspersed throughout the day, and writing reports.
Say that email is the single greatest source of lost time, disorganization and thrash. You lose
them. You forget to respond to them. Every time you read one or respond to one, you need
several minutes to find where you were in the report that you were writing.
So you should deal with the email problem first. It's fairly easy to tackle, and that's another
idea of Kaizen: to take on the low-hanging fruit first. Then you're getting tangible
benefits right away that will stand you in good stead while you conquer the more difficult
problems later on.
You might introduce a folder flow. You're all email wizards by now, so this is just an
example. You might have an inbox and an urgent box. You set up a filter so that all email
marked urgent go into the urgent box, and all others sit in the inbox. You set aside five
minutes every hour, right before you refill your coffee cup, to deal with the urgent items as
quickly as possible you want that coffee, right? And twice, right before lunch and before
you leave for the day, you clear out the inbox, reading and dealing with all items that weren't
by Gina Trapani
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marked urgent. Easy and simple, with process improvements and
thinking built in.
You want to externalize thinking and book-keeping as much as
possible, and you also want them to happen "for free" as much as
possible, or as artifacts of other tasks. You also want to build in error-
proofing as much as possible. The "urgent" filter is an example: by
clearing the "urgent" box, you know that you haven't missed any urgent
items. By chunking it together into a small piece of time at the end of
every hour, you're cutting down on thrash time, the reorganizing
overhead that happens at the beginning and end of every task when
you're trying to reorient your brain.
Kaizen also focuses on eliminating waste. On the factory floor, this
means wasted movement. Setting up tool stations so that everything is
within arm's reach is an easy way of cutting out wasted steps, and
iterated over the course of a day, or a month, for two hundred workers,
this means greatly increased productivity. It also means less wear and
tear for the workers themselves, and that's good for everyone.
In the office environment, "waste" might refer to wasted brain time.
Hemming and hawing to think of what to do with a given email. Having
to look up from your report every five minutes to answer an "urgent"
email that ends up having to do with someone needing to find a home for
his kitty-cat. Across the course of a day, these little interruptions add up.
Standardization is another Kaizen principle. With standardization,
you think about what "best practices" are, and you do so in advance.
Then you externalize those best practices as much as possible, and you
work those practices so that they become automatic. When
things get hectic, when you have ten things to get done before tea and
they're shelling the trench lines for the third time today, you can just fall
back on your habits and follow the procedures that you decided upon
during a calmer time.
I've been adopting one new practice every month. As I got more and
more freelance writing assignments, I had to set up a folder pipeline to
keep track of that. Folder pipelines include error proofing and memory
aids built in so that you don't need to think about them, and if you
perform the menial Tetris tasks of moving things from folder to folder as
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required, they don't take much thought at all. Seconds
per day, really. Compare that to time spent looking
for documents, deciding if the documents are the
right one and wondering whether you already pitched
a story to a given editor.
A few months back, I started using GTDTiddlyWiki.
It's packed with features, and I've found a number of
them that I like very well really, it's just a canvas on
which you can design your own process
improvements and workflows. I store lots of data
there. I back it up by sending it to my Gmail account.
I'm continually tearing apart my system of hyperlinks
and reconfiguring them in ways that make more
sense, are simpler and easier. It took some time
getting used to it, but that single, free HTML
document ended up being my killer app, and I would
miss it terribly. Now I use it every day, and using it is
unconscious. I don't have to think about what I'm
going to do with a phone number or a contact name. I
don't need to wonder where I wrote that little idea. All
that thinking is inbuilt.
Another month, I started using a Hipster PDA. It was
very quick to get used to. Kind of like crack in that
way. It also solved numerous problems related to
forgetfulness, lost slips of paper and clutter.
Kaizen is a system for introducing process
improvements. But the most important thing is to use
these systems to make your life easier. You can use
them to pump out more work, and that's a good thing,
but remember that the whole purpose is so that you
don't have to work those twelve-hour Fridays.
Organization systems are there to remove
Holy wiki, Batgirl! GTD
TiddlyWiki tracks all your Getting Things
Done lists - Next Actions,
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hair-tearing and nail-biting and
rushed deadlines. They don't have
to become a way of life, like that
guy sitting next to you who
sanitizes his own phone handset
with industrial disinfectant before
and after he's using it, the one who
has different color-coded file totes
for each day of the week. He
worships that stuff. Those totes
aren't just totes, they're totems. It
doesn't have to be that way.
Make your improvements small
and gentle and you'll stick with
them.
Jason Thomas is a writer and
computer professional living in
the Twin Cities.
I practized Kaizen and
internalized it even before I
knew what it was called. I'm
not sure how popular it is,
even tho I've read the
Wikipedia article on it
before.
For me, a large part of
Kaizen is being "agile" (to
cop a buzzword), yet so
gradual and gentle that over
the long-term, I can look
and go, "WOWZA! Look at
all those changes!"
However, with near-focus, it
doesn't seem like a lot is
being done. But each day
really stacks up.
I use Gmail labels for
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prioritizing
and I
realize
that
since I
can't
grab
everything
that's
just
unmanageable
I let
small
stuff
drop and
tackle
the
equivalent
of what
the
above
article
describes
as
"urgent".
Focusing
on better
quality
work and
results
for all.
I also
prefer, if
I can, to
work on
projects
in blocks
of time.
Spending
an entire
day on
just one
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