Category: Personal Kaizen

Building Success One Brick At A Time

bricks_1(Photo courtesy Esparta)

Following is an except from a VVS Laxman interview soon after India’s epic test victory over Australia.

Q: Frankly, how confident were you when Ishant Sharma walked in at the fall of the eighth wicket, on 124?
A: Wasn’t thinking too far ahead, wasn’t really thinking of the target, 216… Ishant and I decided to set small goals, decided to look at building the partnership with 10-run bricks.

Focusing on small goals is one of the guiding principles of Personal Kaizen. Smaller goals are a surer path to success to most of us due to two reasons:

  • it makes the overall goal less daunting
  • and thus makes the natural human resistance to change & action that much more surmountable

In this case, India’s daunting task was scoring 93 runs with 2 tail-ender’s support against a spirited Australian pace attack. Laxman broke it down to 10-run bricks that would’ve sounded so much more achievable for either Ishant or Ojha …not to mention Laxman himself.

“The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
– Mark Twain

Every success (wall) is built one small goal (brick) at a time. Focus on that one brick for your action planning & act on it. What is your next brick? 

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Related Posts:

Personal Kaizen – Principles

kaizen

The core principles that form the foundation of Personal Kaizen are as follows:

Take Small Steps

  • Big, sudden improvements induces fear resulting in resistance. Small (immediate & meaningful) steps circumvent fear & resistance to increase chances of success.
  • Take small, immediate & easy steps.

Keep Moving Forward

  • Looking to improve all the time – day in and day out.
  • A continuous process of making steady progress.

Long Term Commitment

  • “Once you think you have arrived, you have already started your descent.” There is no end to improvement.
  • Tiny steps over the long-term these add up to great improvements.

Finding Happiness

marshall-Goldsmith Marshall Goldsmith’s study into happiness reveals an incredibly high correlation between people’s happiness & meaning at work & at home. Happiness has got more to do with us than the job or manager or community or anything else.

The study also finds that stimulating activities (high short term satisfaction) are as important as purposeful activities (high long term benefit) in the pursuit of happiness.

Some takeaways from the study:

  • Reduce TV watching & surfing the web (for non-professional purposes)
  • Spend time exercising & with people you love
  • Challenge yourself
  • Do fewer chores (as you define it).

Read the complete article here.

Other Personal Kaizen Channel posts referring to Marshall Goldsmith’s work:

Stabilizer, Improviser, Catalyst or Theorist. Who are you?

In this post, Eileen Oshea describes the four temperaments people are made up of. Identifying yours will help you make satisfying choices & avoid deep psychological stress.

  1. Stabilizers: Practical and down-to-earth, Stabilizers believe in following the rules and cooperating with others. They are not very comfortable winging it or blazing new trails.
  2. Improviser: Improvisers are excitable, trust their impulses, want to make a splash, prize freedom, and dream of mastering action skills.
  3. Catalyst: Catalysts are driven by a quest for self-knowledge and self-improvement and they want to help others make that same journey.
  4. Theorist: Theorists are the problem solving temperament, particularly if the problem has to do with the many complex systems that make up the world around us.

Read the full article here.