Golf Kaizen

Golf Better Everyday

A golf buddy of mine was always vocally reminding himself, “I just need to be 1/10th of a percent better than yesterday.” He knew that his goal was not a quick win and keeping himself focused on what he could do each day to get there, that is the essence of kaizen, which is Japanese for continuous improvement.

A Kaizen mindset focuses on slow steady progress and assumes that there is no perfect end–everything can be improved. Sounds fully aligned to getting better at a game that you can’t win, doesn’t it?

Kaizen is most effective when you have a specific goal. An open-ended goal, like ‘get better at golf,’ makes measuring progress nearly impossible. It’s easier to work on our goals when we can see progress; this requires measuring.

Just by measuring, we change behavior. Studies have shown that people weighing themselves and not dieting tends to result in people actually losing weight and/or eating healthier. Metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are a massive topic in and of themselves. However, since we can ‘t always feel progress, especially against longer term goals, a series of regular measurements can illustrate whether or not we are on the right path. We need those baseline measurements, so don’t neglect tracking early; don’t wait until you are halfway to your goal. You have formalized your goals, right?

Knowing what to measure is best framed by goals. Goal setting itself is a whole separate topic, but we need our main goal(s) defined. Main goals are generally longer term achievements that require multiple things to occur first. Those multiple things are defined as process goals. From there, we may have short term goals.

Daily (ideally), we should be considering where we are at with our goals. Main goals don’t need a lot of attention, but they are the guiding stars in the distance. Process goals should likely be considered daily. If you have short-term goals, those are a great starting point. We are determining what can be done, today, to make any sort of progress. Body exhausted from the previous day’s strength training? Work on mindfulness or meditation or putting.

This is why having the overarching goals and supporting process goals is important–it reduces the number of excuses to do nothing. In psychology, activation energy is the initial burst of motivation and effort required to overcome the barriers associated with starting a new task. The easier it is to start, the less likely you are to avoid it. For example, if your putting mat is in the garage versus in front of your television, which location do you think is going to make success easier?

Similarly, every round of golf is an opportunity to improve. Even the straight social rounds. Are you staying focused? Are you sticking to your shot processes? Set an intention for the round (i.e., deliberate shots, straight is more important than distance, no three putts) and give yourself a chance to be successful even if you aren’t smashing your personal best on score. The round intention doesn’t need to be directly related to a goal, it is a litmus test of progress over time.

I don’t know how my buddy actually determined 1/10th of a percent better, but even if it was just minutes of practice, he was holding himself accountable to his goal and continuously improving.