Laziness Can be One Of The Serious Problems For Someone.
Usually, when I come home from the outside and sit, I find it difficult to stand up again and do the tasks I have to do. I believe I am not the only one and there are many people like me out there. So what are we going to do with our friend, laziness?
Enter Kaizen.
Enter the Japanese principle of kaizen. Kaizen comes from the words ‘change’ and ‘wisdom’ (Kai= change, Zen=wisdom). It is the practice of committing yourself completely to doing a task for one full minute, in the same minute, every day. And after that minute is over, you can move on with your life and do whatever you want to do.
Don’t schedule your minute.
Do not schedule your minute when you’re committed to other things. Schedule your minute right before bed; no matter what else you’re doing during the day, Be at home for bed, so it will be easy to use your kaizen minute then.
If you find yourself dreading it.
If you find yourself dreading it or blowing it off, remember: it’s only a minute. I laugh at myself now when I am getting obstinate about my minute.
Choose a task.
Choose a task that you can make small progress on day-to-day and isn’t something that has to be done all at once. My task is sorting, reorganizing, and cleaning my room. Obviously, I cannot work on ALL of that for a minute. I can, however, make forward progress a minute at a time by starting to go through a box, throwing some stuff away and keeping other things, etc. When I get around to reorganizing i.e. moving furniture around, that will have to be a more-than-a-minute task.
Give yourself permission to continue.
There have been times when I am nearly through a box and the timer goes off and I get frustrated. I derive a lot of satisfaction from completing things. So I give myself permission to finish that box, drawer or bag if that’s what I want to do.
It’s really easy to finish enough of a task to get me going the next day. I’m clearing my life out of a lot of clutter. I look forward to my minute instead of dreading the chore. I try to keep it to a minute, though I do give myself permission to continue, but not longer than 15 or 20 minutes. My kaizen is completed right before bed, as I mentioned, and I can’t cut into my sleeping time too much.
The idea behind kaizen is that it helps build your confidence as you begin to look forward to completing things for one minute. Whether it’s bench presses or learning a foreign language, kaizen can help take the dread out of a task and instead fill it with joy.
