Day 9 – Continuous improvement

I love continuous improvement almost as much as I love planning. Improvement has always struck me as more noble then say talent. It ratifies the notion that hard work can get you places even if you lack god given gifts for a paticular thing. Which has always seem to be my case. I'm not a good athlete but always seemed to get the trophy for "most improved" rather then most valuable player. My mom always said that was better. Didn't really take her seriously when I was a kid but am starting to see her point a bit better in middle age. 

I  am especially addicted to lists. Like Stephen Covey’s 7 habits you can always find a handful of habits, steps or keys to anything you want in life, whether its 6 pack abs or personal financial success. You can also get these in the negative – as in 8 things not to say in your annual evaluation, job interview, to your wife or girlfriend, etc.

I am not suggesting that the addiction is entirely healthy and I am not so naïve as think that all internet advice is good advice but here are some good ones out there. If nothing else they make you think and provide confirmation of one’s own lists. There's the entertainment value as well.

Speaking of lists, I’ve noticed they tend to be in the range of 7 or 8. Seven habits, 7 deadly sins (and wait! There’s an 8^th! Someone’s always adding (their own personal) 8^th as if they’ve just discovered the Rosetta stone. . . ).  Bringing this point home, I got on the plane to return to Kiev and picked up an FT in the business lounge. Sure enough columnist Luke Johnson has his own list of excuses why entrepreneurs never get their venture off the ground. He call's it the Enemies of Achievement. And while he doesn’t count them, I went ahead and did. There are eight.

But lists can be longer. There is the famous 12 step program. A very good book on thinking, by John C. Maxwell, lists 11 types of thinking that supposedly successful people follow. Rules for life (Richard Templar) goes up to 100, and Life lessons for raising a boy  (Harry H Harrison) totals, 314, although they are summarized by 5 keys. A friend posted a list from Regina Brett who has somewhere between 42 and 45 lessons of life, plus 5 extra (in Louisiana they call that a Lagniappe!). Of course the lists and treasure troves of lessons are endless, but that doesn’t mean they're all bad. That doesn’t  mean they're all good either. The list, everything I need to know in life I learned in kindergarten, for example, strikes me as suspicious, even though all the mothers keep praising it. May have to go back and see.

For now I am sticking to lists of 7 and 12. I like these because they represent natural cycles, i.e. the week or month. And I think cycles give you a clear way to structure your CI activities. My list of 7 is the areas of my life where I do my planning. I segment my goals and to-do lists according to this. The list goes like this:

-          Family (includes Home projects and household activities)

-          Finance

-          Social (friends)

-          Health (Fitness)

-          Career (or Field / Future)

-          Hobbies (could be Fun)

-          Service (or Faith if you’re the religious type)

So funny, I’ve come up with this list on my own starting in 2000 and have revised as above, only to see something similar on a friend’s blog. On a whim I googled “7Fs” and sure enough there they are! Kind of like Tesla and Edison simultaneously inventing the light bulb.

For personal goals I use 12 – one for each month. The idea is that you work on all twelve goals simultaneously but you really focus on one during each month. Borrowed this one on the advice of a lawyer (Gretchin Rubin) turned writer who wrote a book, I believe titled the happiness project.