AFTER our joyful revelling comes the inevitable season of good intentions. When we make our New Year鈥檚 resolutions, we often set ourselves ambitious goals 鈥� to run a half-marathon, learn a language or write a novel. One reason these resolutions often fail is that our focus is too wide 鈥� we think about the reward at the end of the journey, not considering the little steps that we need to take to get there. Then we end up feeling defeated and dejected as we fail to make the progress we want.
Perhaps we should all try to apply the Japanese concept of kaizen instead. I first came across the term in Anna Katharina Schaffner鈥檚 fascinating new book , out on 18 January, which guides us through the causes of burnout and how to avoid it. Kaizen, Schaffner explains, translates as 鈥渃hange for the better鈥� and encapsulates a philosophy of continuous and incremental improvement. If we practise kaizen, we should concentrate on the small wins that will slowly add up to bigger successes, rather than hoping for a sudden transformation that almost never works. Schaffner argues that this emphasis on gradual change prevents our good intentions from adding more stress to our lives, while still leading us to our goals.
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Her descriptions of kaizen reminded me of research on the 鈥溾��. Some people continually look for tiny improvements in their methods. They are constantly asking themselves 鈥淚s there a better way of doing this?鈥� and 鈥淲hat can I do to help myself?鈥�. If you already have a strategic mindset, this may sound obvious, but the research shows that many people fail to do this. Instead, they put in a lot of effort without ever checking to see if they could change their practices to be more efficient, which saps their energy without bringing much progress.
Consider my own 2023 resolution of becoming more fluent in Spanish. I have been quite dedicated, listening to podcasts in the language and using flashcards. But when I recently tested myself on what I had studied earlier in the year, I had forgotten about 90 per cent of the words. If I had had a more strategic mindset 鈥� if I had practised kaizen 鈥� I might have listened to fewer podcast episodes but made sure to spend more time revisiting previous lessons. From week to week, I might not have noticed much difference. But over the year, this one small change to my methods would have paid huge dividends for my fluency.
The principle of kaizen could be applied to any area of our life that we would like to improve. 鈥淚f we want to change our working patterns, we can commence by identifying one small habit that is not serving us and concentrate our efforts on that,鈥� writes Schaffner. This is the kind of resolution I will be making next year.
David Robson is an award-winning science writer and the author of The Expectation Effect: How your mindset can transform your life
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