Kaizen

January 1st, 2022. I made a resolution. “This year, I’m going to become a 10x better developer.” My plan: Learn 5 new frameworks Build 3 major projects Read 20 programming books Contribute to 10 open source projects Ambitious. Exciting. Completely unrealistic. By February 15th, I’d read half a book, started (not finished) one project, and felt like a failure. The problem: I was chasing big, dramatic improvements. The thing nobody tells you: Big improvements don’t compound. Small ones do. ...

In 1950, Toyota was a struggling Japanese car company. American manufacturers like Ford and GM were giants. They had scale, capital, technology. Toyota had none of that. But they had something else: Kaizen. 改善 (kai = change, zen = good) Continuous improvement. Not big, dramatic changes. Not revolutionary breakthroughs. Just small improvements. Every day. By everyone. Over decades, those small improvements compounded into dominance. By 2008, Toyota became the world’s largest automaker. ...