Thanks to the Lean Enterprise Institute for publishing my article about Kaizen, new habits, and New Year's resolutions:
Take Baby Steps Towards Improvement
“As 2019 begins, don't feel bad if your New Year's resolutions have already gotten off track or if that has happened in the past. Various studies suggest that 80 to 90 percent of resolutions fail. Whether our resolutions are about doing more of something, like reading, or doing less of something, like eating brownies, we often get tripped up because our change is too large — it might be framed as all or nothing. Lessons from psychology and workplace continuous improvement approaches show that “baby steps” is a more effective approach to making our resolutions take hold and stick.”
Listen to me read the post (via the Lean Blog Audio podcast):
Listen to my podcasts with Robert Maurer, Ph.D. on Kaizen, change, and psychology:
Best wishes to you for your 2019 resolutions…
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- Engage people at all levels in sustainable improvement
- Shift from fear of mistakes to learning from them
- Apply Lean thinking in practical, people-centered ways
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One story from the book “Unlearn” talks about baby steps at Disney:
I’ll be interviewing the author, Barry O’Reilly for my podcast series…
Another article along these lines:
“Why making New Year’s resolutions is a bad way to start the year”
Chances are your life doesn’t need a major overhaul. Tiny changes to make you slightly new and improved are probably best.