3 little known Japanese hacks that will transform your productivity

I’ve always had a soft spot for Japanese ideas. From practicing Shotokan karate to first dan level as a youth, to renting two out of four of my property business’s food and beverage retail units to Japanese operators. I love the values of efficiency and respect in their culture. In this article I explore my top 3 productivity hacks emanating from Japan. These are ideas which might help those struggling to get things done or organise the numerous things they are having to balance.

1) Personal Kanban

Kanban was developed by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer and businessman, for Toyota automotive in Japan, and was personalised, distilled and popularised in the West in particular by Jim Benson. It is a system for improving performance by eliminating obstacles. 

Personal Kanban is a powerful productivity hack that will help you become more productive in your day-to-day life. You can customize it to suit your specific needs and use it to manage a number of different tasks all in one place.

So, what does it look like? A Kanban Board is split into three columns: Ready, In Progress, and Completed. You write tasks or items of work to-do on magnets, post-its, or thumbtacks and place them in the ready column. You can use colour coding to categorise the tasks for example into projects. As you progress tasks you move them across the columns. Specialised apps can be used as an alternative if you prefer. 

One of the biggest pluses for using the personal Kanban workflow is that it is a replacement for your to-do lists which is easier to stay on task and on schedule. And just like crossing off an item in a traditional to-do list you still have the satisfaction of moving a task into the completed column with personal Kanban.

Kanban has a powerful principle. It is all about visualising your outcomes, enabling you to plan your day, week, and month more effectively. Rather than writing out large task lists which can become disorganised and difficult to follow, Kanbans can help you to visualise the path through your list of tasks, making it much easier to stay on track with your plans. 

This brings us to the next important advantage of using a Kanban style of tracking. Tracking your tasks by hand can be difficult, especially when you don't live by the rules established by the traditional to-do list. Using a personal Kanban process is therefore a highly effective tool as it enables you to prioritise your projects and give yourself a fighting chance against procrastination.

2) Noguchi Filing System

The Noguchi Filing System was invented by Noguchi Yukio, a Japanese economist. It was designed to be a way of self-organising and keeping everything neatly arranged, but always with the most important or most-often used files close to hand. 

For those that simply cannot switch to digital filing, the Noguchi filing system is ideal for keeping paper documents in effortless order. Once the system has been set up, that’s it – it organises itself. 

So, what do you need to do? All you need is a handful of envelopes, or box files/folders if you prefer, big enough to hold the size of paper you usually deal with. Next, trim off the top, including the flap so the envelope remains open and you have easy access to the files inside. Then, grab a sharpie to clearly label the contents and date along the side of the envelope. And that’s it. 

To see the filing system in action, pick up something that you dealt with recently and something that you deal with on a regular basis. That something will return to the far left-hand side of your filing system for you to easily access. Over time, those projects that you work on less often but still need to look at will end up in the middle of the filing system, and those things you don’t deal with, will sit on the right-hand side. Those files remaining on the right-hand side should be removed from the filing system to be archived or disposed of, to prevent clutter building up. 

The Noguchi filing system is therefore a really visual way of showing you your most important projects that you need to focus on. Those things you don’t need to divert your attention to are filtered out and you no longer have to think about them. 

3) Kaizen

Kaizen is the art of making ‘good change’ a part of life. It’s a Japanese word which first came to prominence after the Second World War - when Japan’s financial situation was in dire straits and they were required to work together to rebuild the economy. The small-step improvement approach was actually developed in the USA but brought to Japan to implement. 

The idea behind the Kaizen method is to make continuous improvement towards excellence, rather than focusing on an end result. For example, it might be looking for ways to reduce time wasting or increase efficiency. These are things that can always be improved. The trick is to stop aiming for ‘perfection’ from the get-go and instead apply small changes regularly that will really add up over time. 

You may have heard it before, but the famous framing of Kaizen is 1% growth every day. And so, if you want to write a novel, start by writing just one sentence a day, then slowly increase to two sentences, then three, and so on. Starting new habits in this way is a much more sustainable way of achieving your goals in the long run. A great example of this in action is the UK cycling team and their seemingly massive jump in improvement from the 2002 to the 2016 Olympics. Instead of aiming for Gold (which seemed very far off) the team instead focused on small improvements everywhere – from aerodynamics, to hygiene, from food preparation to sleeping conditions. Taken together, these small improvements added up, giving the UK team a competitive advantage that saw them win multiple Gold medals at the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Olympic Games. 

Ultimately, Kaizen is a mindset that requires buy-in from all parties involved to really get the five pistons of the Kaizen engine firing. These pistons are:

1. Teamwork – improvement is everyone’s business
2. Personal discipline – to help the team, you need to be at your best
3. Improved morale – improvement should be for all, and for all processes
4. Quality circle – everyone should be included, and data is your friend and ally
5. Suggestions for improvement – everyone should be free to point out what they think is wrong and be able to discuss this in a safe and welcoming environment

Conclusion

Finding productivity can be difficult, especially if you’re a procrastinator or always end up putting off those daunting tasks on your never-ending to-do list. I have found personal Kanban very useful with managing my multiple roles and projects. I have a successful friend who I had no idea uses the Noguchi filing system in his home office until I sent him a draft of this article. And I have used Kaizen effectively for new projects and start-ups myself. But when you look for better ways to work, you not only save yourself valuable time and energy, but you also learn new skills and maximise your personal growth. The concepts I outline above are simple yet powerful, so why not give them a try and see what you can achieve. 

With thanks to Amy Cubbon, Dipen Jobanputra, and Jannat Hossain for their assistance in putting this article together