For Big Leaps With New Year’s Resolutions, Start With Baby Steps

By
Mark Graban
-
24
2

Thanks to the Lean Enterprise Institute for publishing my article about Kaizen, new habits, and New Year's resolutions:

Take Baby Steps Towards Improvement

“As 2019 begins, don't feel bad if your New Year's resolutions have already gotten off track or if that has happened in the past. Various studies suggest that 80 to 90 percent of resolutions fail. Whether our resolutions are about doing more of something, like reading, or doing less of something, like eating brownies, we often get tripped up because our change is too large — it might be framed as all or nothing. Lessons from psychology and workplace continuous improvement approaches show that “baby steps” is a more effective approach to making our resolutions take hold and stick.”

Read more at Lean.org…

Listen to me read the post (via the Lean Blog Audio podcast):

Listen to my podcasts with Robert Maurer, Ph.D. on Kaizen, change, and psychology:

https://www.leanblog.org/2013/01/transcript-of-podcast-153-robert-maurer-phd-on-kaizen/
Podcast #315 – Bob Maurer, Ph.D. on “Mastering Fear,” Motivational Interviewing, and More

Best wishes to you for your 2019 resolutions…

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Mark Graban
Mark Graban
https://www.markgraban.com
Mark Graban is an internationally-recognized consultant, author, and professional speaker, and podcaster with experience in healthcare, manufacturing, and startups. Mark's new book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. He is also the author of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the anthology Practicing Lean. Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.

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2 COMMENTS

  2. Another article along these lines:

    “Why making New Year’s resolutions is a bad way to start the year”
    Chances are your life doesn’t need a major overhaul. Tiny changes to make you slightly new and improved are probably best.

    Likewise, most of the changes in behavior that you make should be of the “new and improved” variety. Small changes that enable you to do what you already do more effectively are likely to succeed…

    An advantage to these tiny changes is that you will still make an improvement to your life, but you’re likely to succeed. You give yourself an emotional boost for improving your life without the frustration that comes along with a wholesale disruption.

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