kaizen routines
kaizen is “a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement of working practices, personal efficiency, etc.” i like to think of it as “doing today’s work.” not doing the most optimal efficient highly leveraged thing; just the work set out for today. that’s all. (h/t chris for the handle!)
the goal is that kaizen compounds; small amounts of the same routine over long periods of time compound into serious returns. below are a few such kaizen routines. some i’m currently in the practice of, as of this writing — anki, mathacademy, gym, to some extent zetamac. others i used to be — brick.bot, keybr, readwise. still others i never have been — regular journaling. i’d like to collect these as a testament to the sorts of things that can build up, from small drips in any given day into pools of rich talent.
i now type at 100wpm. this has compounded a number of my skills — i can write and think and code and do a hundred other things so much faster than i could’ve before.
i think that most of life isn’t kaizen — it comes from the improbable but highly impactful encounters — but basically all of the rest is kaizen.
- anki
- zetamac
- https://www.keybr.com/
- brick.bot
- gym
- mathacademy
- readwise (or some other read-it-later app, or reading routine)
- regular journaling/blogging/writing
- leetcode
- (h/t parker)
- meditating (roman suggested this at the same time!)
- forecasting/updating forecasts
if you have other kaizen routines, do send them to me — saulsmunn@gmail.com!