It’s the beginning of a bright new year. A few years ago, I started choosing a ‘Word for the Year’. A word that represented to me how I hoped to grow over the coming twelve months.
This year’s word is ‘Kaizen’.
Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning continuous improvement. Consistently finding something to improve on (or picking one key area of life) and make a little progress on it every day. In his book, Atomic Habits, author James Clear refers to 1% improvements.
It’s a three-step process:
- Show up. Commit to doing something every day.
- Focus on getting better at it every day.
My commitment is to improve my writing both the quality and the quantity of it.
Which brings me to:
- Choose only one thing or area to work on. I’m a champion at saying “ooooh, I want to get better and this, and this, and, oh yes, can’t forget that. And by week two I’m so overwhelmed that everything falls apart.
Another way to continuously improve is to take it from the other side and eliminating mistakes.
A little update: I am down to the short strokes in the editing process for the second book in the Lucy & Dee series (release date October 2023) and I’ve started drafting book 3.
I hope to sort out what I’ve learned from writing the first two books to make the process of writing the third for more smoothly (and faster).
Continuous progress is the journey of a lifetime. What a life we could live if we just improved a little bit every day – the results take care of themselves.
