Kaizen is a Japanese term meaning continuous improvement, made up of two words, 'KAI' and 'ZEN' which serve as the basis for Japanese business philosophy. One of the best examples of Kaizen practice is adopted by the Toyota production system post-WW2.
Kaizen has been applied in organizations and disciplines, right to an individual that one can practice. Through relative sample measures and actions, these small incremental steps can lead to big changes in your creative work.
The main goals of 'Kaizen' are to
- improve your quality of work
- Increase your efficiency
- Boost productivity
- Level your processes
- reduce waste
- save time = money
- reduce your work cost
- improve profitability
You get it.
Here's how to adopt Kaizen step by step (see chart)
step 1: Discover improvement potential
step 2: Analyse current methods
Step 3: Generate ideas
Step 4: develop an implementation plan
Step 5: Implement the plan
Step 6: Evaluate new plans
A direct example / I built my first mecha last year this time, and compared to today; there has been quite a significant change, all thanks to adopting the kaizen philosophy. (I will be airdropping them to my collectors this Q3.
I've also made improvements in my workflow too.
I created and saved a website page template for each nft piece I uploaded, so I need not re-create them every time, thus saving me time to focus on my craft.
How to start? Here're some places to look into:
- your daily task → online automation you can think @zapier
- your organization → can you organize info? @notionHQ
- your tools → can it be simplified or amplify
- your art → one mini detail to improve
Remember, simplicity is the key to the core philosophy. start small but keep going.
Think how small artists start small, but they keep improving their craft, and that speaks volumes about their dedication to their work.
And... I am still improving as we go along.