APPRECIATION #16: KAIZEN NOT KAROSHI

Kaizen and karoshi are both Japanese words that don’t have readily available English equivalents. One means improvement, and one means to work yourself to death. Kaizen means continuous improvement. Karoshi means to work yourself to death. Do a quick search for kaizen and you’ll find a bunch of business strategies linked to the term.

I first ran across the idea here:(http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/08/10/get-1-better-every-day-the-kaizen-way-to-self-improvement/)The title of the post was “Get 1% Better Every Day: The Kaizen Way to Self-Improvement” and it is has been a helpful to me.

Life is daunting. My job is daunting. The problems in the world are daunting. What is being asked of public schools is daunting. It’s too much. It’s unrealistic. One way to get there is to start and keep improving. It’s not the only way. You can have giant revolutions and try to change everything, but those often require more energy and more resources, and simply often don’t work. Do a little better every day. Inch forward. Be 1% better tomorrow. The results will add up.