Welcome Wednesday: Kaizen experiments... in real life!

[Dave LIAO]

The Agile Scrum methodology recommends including a Kaizen experiment per sprint:  "…a kaizen item be prioritized in the sprint backlog"

Examples in the workplace:

• pre-flight checklist, and enforcing deadlines (from Atlassian Learning)

This tends to be related to work, whether you're a software dev team or a marketing group.

For this week's Welcome Wednesday, I want to ask:

What kind of Kaizen experiments have you tried in your life? Are there any you're interested in doing, but you're unsure what the first step would be?

🗯️ Comment with your thoughts!

💡 This has been a Welcome Wednesday, an opportunity for you (yes, you) to participate on the forums. (Curious? Read past Welcome Wednesdays!)

[Amanda Barber]

I think most of my personal goals are pretty much Kaizen experiments - micro-goals, iterated on quickly to keep momentum! My current task tracker includes being outside for 10 minutes a day, reading for 10+ minutes, stretching/doing physical therapy exercises, and drinking water. Each of these started independently from one another and were built on. While I never really changed the "minimum" time for each, I've expanded what I usually do through iteration!

[Anne Saunders]

Nutrition has been an iterative, kaizen-style journey of experiments for me for about a decade now. I have lots of tummy troubles and allergies (getting diagnosed as an adult is fun!) so I had to re-learn to shop, to cook, then to shop & cook better because not all gluten free and safe-for-me foods are as nutritious as I might hope. 

This year, I have focused on meal prep - it started with just making a big pot of chili or soup for the sake of convenience, then it became a series of experiments, like, How do I get more protein? More fiber? Will it still taste good in 5 days? Are there other ways to present this in case I get bored? Can I quit taking a multivitamin and still meet my micronutrient needs? (The answers so far: add beans, add beans, mostly, mostly, and yes!)

[Dave LIAO]

It's super interesting that our bodies are little labs where we can conduct experiments.

I enjoy eating spicy foods, and a friend suggested that I have yogurt once in awhile to regulate my system. I love yogurt, and never thought about stocking a stash of yogurt for this purpose. Such a small, lovely change.

[Anne Saunders]

Yes! I'm still a spicy food fiend, but I'm on the fermented coconut (cogurt, if you will). There's a pretty new (safe for me) Indian restaurant near me that does not care about anyone's stomach lining, and I love them 😍

[Matt Doar _Adaptavist_]

Years ago I started using a "day book" for work. It's just a Google doc, but every time I do something work-related, I add a line or so of text to that day. At the end of each week I add a horizontal line under the week. And a new doc for each year.

This gives me a sense of what I've done each day, each week and each month. I can search for rough details of meetings, and work things from months ago. It started when I had to bill for each work hour, and I'd get to the end of a work and find that I'd forgotten most of what I had done.

I have to resist the temptation to add sensitive info to the doc (even though it's private to me), and I try to make sure I don't use it as a TODO list substitute. But it does keep me grounded.

[Anne Saunders]

I've thought about journaling a few times but never really been able keep it going as an adult. This seems much more my speed!

[Dave LIAO]

@Matt Doar _Adaptavist_ - I've kept massive plain text files for the same purpose! Great minds...

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

After months of unhealthy life, I'm going to the gym, dropping smoking, and other things.

Actually, keeping good form, I find, is the hardest for everybody because it is so easy in daily life to actually take more care of yourself.