Applying Kaizen-inspired ideas to the gym or to 'Localization stuff'!

Probably one of the things that frustrates me the most in my life goals is the lack of a sense of progress. I guess I'm not alone! as the mentality of immediate satisfaction seems to haunt us more and more, whether it's in financial matters like "buy now and worry about paying later," or with "magic recipes that will make you lose those extra kilos quickly," or the "latest AI development" that promises to localize your content effortlessly in just seconds!

We are constantly dealing with the pressure to achieve more in less time. Whether in personal matters like gym results or influencing strategic decisions when expanding into international markets in our Localization world.

The pressure for "immediate" results is real.

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There are times when this pressure leads us to feel deeply discouraged due to the lack of apparent progress.

Today, I want to share with you in this post the technique that helps me the most to stay motivated, whether it's in personal goals or in my professional work in the Localization industry. This technique is not new; in fact, it has been with us since the 1950s. It's called Kaizen.

Many of you reading this post are probably familiar with the Kaizen concept, but let me give you a brief overview and its origin. Kaizen is a Japanese word that means "continuous improvement." It's a work methodology that companies like Toyota adopted to make their production models as efficient as possible.

This efficiency is based on the idea of a constant small (1%) improvement over an extended period. That concept of the 1% improvement we do still see it nowadays in different areas, like Warren Buffet's advice on compound interest to maximize savings when investing or James Clear's (writer of the best seller Atomic Habits)  idea of improving by 1%

I must admit that I struggled to understand this 1% improvement and marginal improvement idea.

I understood the theory but not its practical application... until I started going to the gym. The process of gaining strength and muscle mass is extremely slow and becomes even slower as you age! After spending days/weeks training on certain machines, I noticed that moving up to the next 2kg "plate" was a real challenge. That feeling of lack of progress is what kills the motivation to achieve our goals, whether it's gaining muscle mass or gaining the support of the C-suite stakeholders to approve a 10% increase in our Localization budget to localize social media in specific markets.

The day I understood it was when chatting with a gym partner; I mentioned how difficult it was for me to increase weight on the machines I used. He suggested using 0.5kg weight dumbbells lying around to increase the weight gradually. It was like a lightbulb moment! Going from 2kg one week to another was challenging, but gradually moving from 0.5kg to 2kg was much more manageable! That's when I grasped the concept of continuous improvement and taking it step by step. I started applying it in many aspects of my life.

·      Reading one more paragraph from the books I'm interested in daily turned into reading more books yearly.

·      Eating more vegetables or fruits daily turned into consuming less junk food over the year.

·       Saving a few more euros per week by cutting unnecessary expenses (goodbye, grande latte from Starbucks) turned into more savings at the end of the year.

What fascinates me about the Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement and small progress over time is that it works for both personal and professional matters.

Applying the mindset of continuous improvement in our Localization work

Usually, when we want to improve something in our Localization strategy, we first set an ambitious goal. From there, we design a strategy to reach it quickly. If we don't see rapid changes, we feel like we're not improving. To break this cycle, we can try changing the way we set goals—smaller, but consistent objectives that, when we look back, show us that we are indeed making progress. This progress can be the driving force for us every week, every month, every year.

Here are some ideas on how we could apply this Kaizen methodology in the Localization world. This list is by no means exhaustive; it's not intended to be comprehensive but simply to provide ideas to get started.

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 Conclusion

 It seems that, at times, we might feel that unless changes show quick results, we're not progressing. And that path will take us to frustration, unsuccessful attempts at improvement, and ultimately to giving up. But there is an alternative to that burnout; there’s an alternative to quitting. We can focus on gradually but consistently improving our tasks, habits, and mindset. Sure, it’s not as thrilling to focus on marginal improvement versus aiming for the stars. But, in the long run, it works better and will bring us closer to whatever we are trying to achieve, especially when considering the impact in the long run. Over time, there's a substantial difference between making small, frequent improvements in a shorter span of time and not doing so, whether it's in the gym lifting weights or steadily refining our localization strategy to expand the reach of our digital product.