Let’s start the second blog with a small and easy idea. It is called “1% better every day.” It is boring but underrated idea because actually, most people around me, they only knew how to read this idea. They never understood and applied it in their life. I feel bad because when this idea became so popular by a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear, as a lazy person myself, I am so happy that finally my way of life was getting appreciated. But no, people still meddled with excess wasteful “work”. People still tried to change themselves dramatically, only to find out later in the same day they gave up.
I ask you a question, how many times have you told yourself “starting Monday, I’m going all in”?
New diet. New workout routine. Wake up at 5 AM. Cut out all the junk. Read 30 minutes every night. Meditate. Save money. Build that side hustle. All. At. Once.
And then Monday comes around and… you’re back on the couch watching Netflix at 10 PM wondering what happened to your grand transformation.
Don’t feel bad — you’re not broken. You’re just human. And there’s a much better way to change your life. It’s called Kaizen, and once you understand it, you’ll never want to go back to the “overnight transformation” trap again.
So What Even Is Kaizen?
Kaizen (改善) is a Japanese word that literally means “improvement” or “change for the better.” It refers to something more specific: the philosophy of continuous, small improvements over time.
The concept was actually born in the US — not Japan — when Depression-era American business theorists needed to improve factory output during World War II. Rather than rebuilding entire factories from scratch, they found that making small, consistent improvements across every step of production led to massive results. Japanese companies like Toyota then embraced this American idea of small, continuous improvement, and using it, they slowly but surely began to outperform American automakers during the 1970s and 1980s.
Fast forward to today, and Kaizen has been embraced far beyond the factory floor — into fitness, personal finance, productivity, and everyday life. And here’s why it actually works where your Monday motivation never does.
The Math That Will Blow Your Mind
Before we get into the “how,” let’s talk numbers for a second.
If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.
Thirty-seven times better. From just 1% each day. That’s not motivational poster fluff — that’s actual compound math. James Clear lays this out in his book Atomic Habits, one of the most practical books ever written on human behavior. And if you stretch it to two years of consistent 1% daily improvements, you’d be 1,427 times better than when you first started.
But do you really need the numbers? I cannot count it myself. The idea is you know what areas you want to improve but start small and consistently. You will look back past one year and think “Damn!”. That’s the idea! You will never count exactly what is 1 percent, but you will start small and hold on to that improvement for years.
Think about that next time you feel like your tiny improvements “don’t count.”
Why Your Brain Hates Big Changes (And Loves Small Ones)
The reason your “all or nothing” resolutions keep failing isn’t about willpower. It’s literally neuroscience.
Neuroplasticity — the brain’s capacity to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections — continues throughout the lifespan, supporting learning, memory, and recovery. In simple terms: your brain can absolutely change. But it doesn’t change overnight.
When you repeat behaviors, your neurons start to wire together. The connections then get myelinated — they develop a fatty insulating sheath that makes signals travel faster and feel more automatic. Repeated behaviors trigger increased myelination of specific neural circuits, accelerating signal transmission and strengthening pathway efficiency.
The practical takeaway? Start small. Make it specific. Be focused. Repeat.
When you try to change 10 things at once, your brain gets overwhelmed. But one tiny change, repeated consistently, literally rewires itself to make that behavior effortless.
My Story: The 8-Day Journal Disaster
I know this feeling personally, because I’ve lived it — many times.
Back when I was a director of a company, I decided I needed to start writing down my daily to-do list every morning. Sounds simple enough, right? The problem was, my mornings were already packed — breakfast, conversations with people, catching up on the news. There was no gap for a new habit to squeeze into.
I lasted exactly 8 days.
Day 9, I was back to winging it. The habit didn’t stick because I was trying to bolt a new behavior onto an already-full schedule. So, I adjusted. Instead of forcing it into my morning chaos, I shifted the writing to just 5 minutes before I started working — a time slot that was already somewhat quiet and transitional. This was the time I always arrived at my office, 5 minutes early.
It worked. Slowly, those 5 minutes stretched to 10. And now? Writing down my priorities before work is so ingrained, I could do it half asleep. I know what I need to do like the back of my hand.
The lesson: don’t just pick a habit. Pick the right slot for it.
Research conducted at University College London demonstrates that habit formation timelines vary dramatically based on complexity — simple behaviors may take 18 days, while complex routines can take up to 254 days for complete neural pathway establishment. Forget the “21-day myth.” Give yourself grace, and find the right moment.
The “Going to the Gym” Trap
Let’s use a classic example. You decide you’re out of shape, so you sign up for a gym membership and plan to go four times a week while cutting 500 calories a day. Sounds solid, right?
Except… you’re currently too tired to work out at all. You come home drained. Going to the gym means changing clothes, driving there, showering after, driving home — that’s easily two hours per session. Four sessions a week? That’s a serious chunk of your life committed to a habit your body isn’t ready for yet.
And on top of all that, you’re planning to eat less while doing more. The Kaizen approach to self-improvement completely circumvents the unproductive ups and downs all too common to the quest. By breaking down big, overwhelming goals into super small, discrete pieces, Kaizen encourages action.
My Story: How I Said No to the Gym
I’m going to tell you something that might be a little controversial in the fitness world: I walked into a gym once, looked at the membership application… and walked right back out.
The gym in my town required a minimum three-month commitment. I stared at that application form and said, “Sorry for wasting your time, but I cannot do this.” The sales rep was not happy — I caught the frown loud and clear. But I knew something about myself: no amount of commitment fees would make me show up at that place.
What I do love is water. So instead of forcing myself into a gym setup that would’ve made me miserable, I got a swimming pool membership. Way cheaper. Way more enjoyable for me personally.
The result? I swim at least twice a week, consistently. I also walk regularly. No gym, no six-pack abs, no Instagram-worthy transformation — I just a guy who stays healthy doing the things he actually enjoys. The videos of those six-pack abs men scattered all over social media? I watched it with disgust. While it looks healthy, many of them boost themselves with pills. So what if I could not get those abs? I prioritize my health, my body mass index is good, all of that enough for me. This is an example that you never count what is “1 percent” looks like. But you improve every day until you consistently do it with ease. And maybe there is a ceiling above telling you “This habit is enough. I do not need more improvement. I just need to do it the same way again tomorrow.” Just like me, swim twice a week is my ceiling.
I am no athlete. I’m just someone who knows that the best exercise is the one you’ll actually do.
What you are doing is engraining the routine into your brain, building the roots of habit so that, when you start to make it harder on yourself, things will still go according to plan. Find your version of the swimming pool. Work with your personality, not against it.
The Kaizen Approach to Money (From Someone Who’s Actually Run a Budget)
Most budgets fail the same way most gym plans fail — they’re too aggressive from day one. You set an unrealistically tight spending limit, something unexpected pops up (it always does), and the whole thing collapses.
The Kaizen approach to personal finance is about understanding your flow first — then making small, smart process fixes. Break the big goal into small, measurable steps. Instead of “I want to save $1,200 more this year,” try “I will save $3.50 every day by cutting one unnecessary purchase.” The psychology behind it is you always find something you don’t need only if you look at your money daily.
My Story: Start Free, Scale Smart
As a company director, I spent a lot of time staring at budgets. Fail to manage money, and the company goes under — because of me. That kind of responsibility makes me very allergic to waste, very fast.
The principle I always came back to was this: start as small and cheap as possible, and only scale when you’ve proven the idea works.
Whenever we launched something new, I’d ask: can we start this for free? If yes, we start for free. We watch how customers respond. Only when the demand showed up — when we had real evidence that people wanted it — did we invest in tools to help it run smoothly.
This is exactly Kaizen applied to business finance: don’t build the full production line before you know the product sells. Start with one table, one product, one customer. Then grow.
If you haven’t proven your idea yet, you should almost always start with the cheapest version of it.
Kaizen for Productivity: How Being Lazy Made Me More Efficient
Kaizen concept from the original business world that most self-help books gloss over: eliminating waste from your workflow.
In manufacturing, “waste” means anything that slows down production — unnecessary steps, duplication, waiting. In your daily life, it’s the same. Time wasted on checking email five times, doing the same task twice, sitting in meetings that could’ve been a two-line message; these things quietly eat your day.
Successful people like field experts, CEOs, athletes, or artists always focus on small improvements on a daily basis, and by doing these small improvements they create big changes in their work or in life.
My Story: I’m Lazy. That’s Why I’m Good at This.
Here’s a confession: I am a genuinely lazy person.
I started this blog partly because of my laziness — I needed a reason to be efficient with my time so I could go home early and do absolutely nothing. I love layering on the sofa. I wonder sometimes if there’s anyone lazier than me (probably not, but let’s not test that).
But here’s the thing — laziness, when you’re self-aware about it, becomes a productivity superpower. Because I knew I was lazy, I ruthlessly cut anything unnecessary from my schedule. I can look at a calendar and immediately spot the meetings that don’t need to happen.
Take email for example. Most managers I know check their inbox constantly throughout the day, treating it like a live chat. Me? I check email once. And then one more time right before a meeting, just in case I forgot something important. That’s it.
Is it efficient? Absolutely. Does it occasionally mean I miss something by an hour? Sure. But doing repetitive tasks like checking email every 20 minutes? That’s waste, pure and simple — unless you’re in a role where immediate response is literally the job.
The nuance worth noting: repetitive action is wasteful when you’re managing things. But it’s essential when you’re learning or mastering a skill. Drilling the same piano chord, re-reading a chapter, practicing a presentation — that repetition is what builds the myelin pathways we talked about earlier. Context is everything.
The Part Nobody Talks About: Balance
A lot of productivity content makes it sound like you should optimize every single minute — eliminate Netflix, cut social time, grind until you’re perfect. That’s not Kaizen. That’s a recipe for white flag.
Real improvement requires recovery. Making 1% improvement daily, while not notable in any way, is more sustainable in the long run. The key words there are sustainable and consistent. If you’re miserable, you won’t stick with it.
Watch films. Go swimming. Sit and do nothing on the couch for an afternoon. Spend time with people you love. These things aren’t productivity killers — they’re the inputs that fuel everything else.
The real goal isn’t to become a hyper-optimized robot. It’s to build a life that’s genuinely better than the one you have now, so you can maintain for years — not just until Thursday, or worse, giving up at the same day.
How to Start
Here’s your starter kit. Pick just one:
For fitness: Don’t join a gym. Find the physical activity you actually like and do it twice this week. Swimming (like me), walking, dancing in your room — it counts.
For money: Look at your last month of spending. Not to punish yourself — just to see it clearly. One insight is enough. Count how many times you waste your many for something you don’t need per day, per week, and per month. Start reduce the average one by one, day by day.
For daily planning: Instead of a new morning routine, find that 5-minute window just before you start working. Write 3 things you need to accomplish today. Just 3. I started by writing 2 things only and it worked.
For productivity: Commit to checking your email a set number of times today. Two or three is plenty for most people. See how it feels. Choose one of your many lists for productivity, start doing it. When you arrives at your personal ceiling of it, pick another inside your lists, and start do it again.
For sleep: Open your window a crack tonight. Research on temperature and sleep cycles suggests it might matter more than you think. Set different alarm sounds for one week. Listen to boring sounds while you sleep, like nature sounds, classical music, or affirmative videos, they all free on Youtube.
Ask yourself this question every single day: What’s one small thing I can start doing that would improve my life? Then, start small. Like really small.
Conclusion
You don’t need a dramatic transformation. You don’t need to overhaul your entire life this Monday. You just need to be 1% better today than you were yesterday.
If you get better by 1 percentage point every day for a year, you will be 37 times better at the end of the year. Your habits are the compound interest when it comes to self-improvement. Everything is compound interest, it is really world wonder.
I’m living proof of this — from an 8-day journal failure that became a daily non-negotiable, to ditching the gym forever in favor of a swimming pool I actually look forward to, to running lean company budgets by always asking “can we start this cheaper?” — every single one of those wins started with a tiny, almost embarrassingly small step.
This approach works with your brain instead of against it. It builds momentum instead of burning you out. And unlike your last Monday resolution — it actually sticks.
Start with one push-up. One saved dollar. One email check fewer per day.
The longest journey still starts with a single step. Make yours today.
Sources Used in This Post:
- Art of Manliness — artofmanliness.com
- Goncalo Hoshi on Medium — medium.com
- Learn2LiveFully — learn2livefully.com
- Vanquish Therapies — vanquishtherapies.co.uk
- Jason Forrest on LinkedIn — linkedin.com
- James Clear, Atomic Habits — jamesclear.com / amazon.com
- Develop Strong Mind — developstrongmind.com
- Charlotte Grysolle — charlottegrysolle.com
- ScienceDirect, “The Neuroplastic Brain” — sciencedirect.com
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