On that last thought, with the deadline looming, I’ve found some great, and free, apps that have really improved my productivity when writing. I don’t know about you but when I’m on my computer I often get distracted with emails and the Internet. When work’s going slow I tend to think that the odd five or ten minutes surfing the net will really help to recharge my batteries. Of course ten minutes usually turns into an hour or more as I surf from one blog to another, one website to the next. Well no more thanks to these free apps.

A while back I heard of a great piece of software called Writeroom. It’s a simple text editor that blanks your desktop and just displays a single column of text so that you can focus purely on your writing. As Writeroom takes up your whole desktop, as opposed to opening in a window, it even blocks out your task bar and icons so there’s really nothing to distract you from the job of writing.

Unfortunately Writeroom is only available for the Mac and as I use a PC I’ve been unable to use it. Then I found Q10, Jdarkroom and Pyroom, all of them clones of the Mac Writeroom.

Q10 runs on Windows and which I can use via Wine, a piece of open source software that allows you to run Windows programs on linux. Of the three it’s the most mature, and one of its best features in my opinion is the real-time word count that’s permanently displayed in the lower left of the screen. You can also download a version with a spellchecker included and has a quirky typewriter sound effect and the carriage-return “ping” when you type (though to be honest these don’t work with Wine – nor have I been able to get it to install on Vista). You can also get the word count to work backwards, so if you have a 2,000-word assignment due, you enter you total word count and with every word you type it knocks one off the total.

JDarkroom, available for Windows, Mac and Linux, is another great full screen text editor that also includes a word count but unfortunately it’s not in real-time and is only displayed by using a keyboard shortcut. Unfortunately page navigation doesn’t work either on my laptop via the Page Up and Page Down keys, which sort of defeats the object. Everytime I open Jdarkroom I’m at the start of the document and when that document is over 100 pages long, it takes forever to navigate down to the bottom one line at a time using the arrow keys.

Finally Pyroom (linux only), is written in python and is quite new. As such all it does is display your text and does not yet include a word count or spellchecker though these are meant to be on the to-do list. I actually like this the most and looks like it will be a great Writeroom clone once it matures a little. I sure hope they include a word count in real time and especially a word count that works in reverse like Q10.

Obviously these editors are just plain text editors. After each chapter has been written I’ve to open the file in OpenOffice and format the headings, change fonts, insert the foot notes, and once the book is finished I’ll have to insert the chapter list and index as well, but even so, taking all that into account, I can still confirm that my productivity has drastically improved with all the distractions of my desktop removed.

Right now I’m sat in an internet cafe before heading out with Y to the city center for some Hungarian nightlife. We all need a break from time to time to recharge our batteries and what with my work, writing my second book and getting ready for our first child due in February, I felt now was as good a time as any to do just that. I will be back home next week and will continue posting to Complete Kaizen so don’t worry, I will be back.

I’m especially pleased and grateful to improvedlife.ca for recommending my post and giving it top spot, because of the newness of this blog and because this was only the second carnival I’ve submitted to. The previous one was the Manival carnival which features, as the name suggests, posts written by men.

Blog carnivals are a great way to publicize your blog and build up your readership, and regardless of your blog’s topic I’m sure there’ll be a carnival to suite. If you have a blog that discusses self improvement or life hacks why not submit a post to next week’s Improving Life carnival. You can register using the submission form at blogcarnival.com and choose “carnival of improving life” from the drop down box.

If this is your first visit to Complete Kaizen, perhaps after reading about me on improvedlife.ca, then I hope you’ll read some more of my posts and come again. For convenience you can subscribe to my full text feed or choose to have my posts emailed directly into your inbox by using the links on the right.

Improving one’s whole person is seen as important to the Japanese. In fact, when a person in Japan decides to catch up with a friend they haven’t seen for a while, they say they are going to see how they have changed.

This aspect of kaizen is known as kokoro. Literally this word can be translated as heart, spirit, or feelings, but again being a concept the meanings can vary and a more accurate translation would be essence. If you haven’t heard of kokoro it’s not surprising as it’s little used here in the West. Kokoro refers to the psychological improvements and changes that take place as a person travels through life and the physical, spiritual and intellectual development of that person.

Kokoro therefore regards the journey as being as important as reaching the goal. As the meaning of kaizen is continuous improvement, there is in effect no finishing line; the goal can never be truly reached as the target is always moving. Thus kokoro, as a part of the kaizen philosophy, is a very important concept for us to understand.

Too many times, whether in life or in business, the realization of the goal is seen as the most important aspect of change; the tangible, bottom line improvement upon which we will judge success. However, if we were to apply the kokoro principle, the improvements we make along the way, no matter how small, are themselves of equal importance.

In an earlier post I spoke about how, when planning any improvement we should celebrate each small “win.” This is essentially kokoro in action. Each win is important, not only because it keeps our motivation high, but because each small step we successfully implement is in itself an improvement. With each win we have improved ourselves and those around us and successfully moved ourselves on from the position we started from. Whether it’s our first step along the kaizen path or one of many, it’s still a win and deserves celebrating. That’s kokoro.

When we attempt to improve some aspect of our lives, we should question our reasons, our motivation. Are our underlying reasons for change based around finding ways to truly benefit ourselves and our family, our friends and colleagues, or are they for purely selfish reasons? Of course we may have the goal of acquiring for ourselves greater wealth, but is it for wealth’s sake or is it to use that wealth to further improve our condition and the condition of those around us? And is the pursuit of wealth making us blind to the other, less material improvements we have made in its pursuit.

When we decide on making operational changes at work do we do so from the point of view of helping our workers benefit and develop as valued colleagues and human beings, or do we just view it from a financial, bottom line position? Are we only interested in making those changes that will please and improve our shareholders position, whilst the interests and self-improvement of our workers are pushed firmly to the side?

If we find our underlying motivations are based solely around the end goal, the final product, then we are failing in our commitment to introduce kaizen to our lives and it is doubtful if we’ll stick with it. We will become bored when our primary goal is still a long way off and we will end up becoming distracted by short-term, quick fix solutions where success is usually short-lived at best. We’ll also miss the opportunity to appreciate and celebrate the small changes we have made and that have improved our condition, albeit in a minor way.

Indeed, you can only say that you are practicing kaizen, the principle of gradual continuous improvement, when you first understand and practice kokoro.