Transitioning from good to better and from better to best
HAVING COMPLETED more than a quarter of 2018, it is a good time to reflect on the resolutions and goals you set yourself at the beginning of the year. This stocktaking will reveal what progress you have made and if you need to make changes to your strategies.
This assessment might remind you that you have not been keeping track of your progress or you have totally forgotten about the resolutions and goals you had set for yourself. Indeed, the evaluation, in its extreme, might remind you that you have resorted to simply wishing that your hopes and aspirations will come to fruition without any effort on your part.
It is widely said that German mathematician, physicist and Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them,” he said.
So, if you have not been implementing your strategies to achieve the resolutions and goals you had set for 2018, it is probably safe to conclude that you are insane to be anticipating that they will materialise by the end of the year because you have patiently waited.
The good news is that you still have 36 weeks, or about 75 per cent of the year, left to take actions that will bring your resolutions and goals to reality. This is, therefore, a good time to make a detailed assessment of where you are and what you need to do to get to where you need to be.
CELEBRATE SUCCESS
Let us assume that your stocktaking reveals that you are on track with your goals, congratulations are in order. You should probably go out and celebrate your success. However, after the celebration, you may want to challenge yourself to find ways to further maximise the use of your resources and time to ensure that you exceed your goals and expectations. In other words, utilise the principle of building on your successes, or continuous improvement.
At the Jamaica Productivity Centre, we utilise and promote the Kaizen philosophy. Kaizen is a Japanese principle that advocates continuous improvement. ‘Kai’ means change and ‘zen’ means good, that is, change for better. The philosophy further dictates that there is always room for improvement and that we should innately strive to ensure that today’s achievements are better than yesterday’s, and that tomorrow’s will be better than today’s.
If you change for the better, you are more likely to experience positive growth, but if you choose to remain unchanged, you are likely to experience stagnation. Changing for the better is relevant to whatever stage of life in which you find yourself – student, worker, business owner, policymaker or just a regular man or woman.
Change is not always simple, but it is a necessity. A practical way to change is to stop wasting resources on activities that offer little or no benefit and focus on activities that position you closer to your goals. This will require that you rearrange your thinking and your actions to find ways that allow you to work smarter and not necessarily harder.
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and a focused effort.” – Paul J. Meyer