The complete Harada Method broken down: 5 phases, 20 steps, the 64 Chart, the daily diary, and the four aspects that make it work. Everything you need to start building your grid in 2026.
In the early 2000s, a physical education teacher named Takashi Harada was working at a public junior high school in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Osaka, Japan. The school's athletics program was dead last in the region. Students were disengaged. Most people had written the school off.
Harada didn't accept that. He developed a structured goal-setting system that required students to connect big ambitions to daily actions, track their routines, reflect on their progress, and take personal responsibility for the outcomes. He drew on Buddhist mandala design principles and his own experience coaching struggling kids who needed something concrete to hold onto.
The results were staggering. His students went from last place to first in regional athletics, and they held that position for 13 consecutive years. Word spread through the Japanese education system, then to corporate Japan, then to sports coaching worldwide.
Today, the Harada Method is used by more than 150,000 people across 600+ companies, including Uniqlo, Toyota, Kirin, and Nomura Securities. It operates in 25 countries and has been translated into six languages. The Japan Management Association has called it one of the best processes for day-to-day management in the world.
You probably heard about it because of Shohei Ohtani. His high school coach, Takashi Sasaki, trained in the Harada Method and had a sixteen-year-old Ohtani fill out the 64 Chart. That chart is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But the method is far bigger than one athlete. Here's how the full system works.
The Harada Method isn't just a grid you fill out. It's a 20-step process organized into five phases. Each phase builds on the last, moving you from abstract ambition to daily execution. Here's the architecture.
Define what you want to achieve and when. The Harada Method requires both a tangible goal (measurable, with a deadline) and an intangible goal (who you want to become in the process). This dual-goal structure is what separates it from standard SMART goals.
Connect your goal to something larger than yourself. Why does this goal matter? Who benefits when you achieve it? Harada believed that goals rooted only in self-interest run out of fuel. Purpose gives you staying power when motivation fades.
Honestly assess where you are right now. What are your strengths? Your weaknesses? What's worked before and what hasn't? This phase includes analyzing your past successes and failures to find patterns you can leverage or avoid.
This is where the 64 Chart lives. You break your goal into 8 pillars, then break each pillar into 8 specific actions. You also plan your daily routines, identify potential obstacles, and decide how you'll handle them before they show up.
Execute with daily tracking. The Harada Method includes a daily diary, a routine checklist, and regular reviews with a coach or mentor. This phase is what turns a plan into a lived practice.
Within those five phases, Harada defined 20 specific steps. You don't need to memorize all of them to get started, but understanding the key ones gives you the full picture of how the system fits together.
The remaining steps involve deepening self-analysis, refining your action plan, and building systems for long-term sustainability. But these twelve cover the core structure that drives results.
Open64 gives you the Harada Method's 64 Chart in every new tab. Pick a template, fill your pillars, define your actions. Free, fast, and always visible.
Add to Chrome — FreeThe 64 Chart is the heart of the Harada Method. It's the piece Ohtani made famous, and it's where most people start. Here's exactly how to fill one out.
Visually, the 64 Chart is a 3x3 grid of 3x3 grids. Your central goal (your purpose) sits in the middle. The eight cells surrounding it hold your pillars. Each pillar then expands into its own 3x3 sub-grid, where the center repeats the pillar name and the eight surrounding cells hold your specific actions.
Total: 1 purpose + 8 pillars + 64 actions = the entire architecture of your goal on a single page.
Start with the center cell. This is your Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP). It should be specific enough to measure but ambitious enough to organize your life around. Harada insisted that it include a deadline and a clear outcome.
Good examples: "Launch my SaaS product with 1,000 paying users by December 2026." "Complete an Ironman triathlon in under 12 hours by October 2026." "Build a financially independent freelance practice earning $15K/month by Q3 2026."
Bad examples: "Be successful." "Get healthier." "Make more money." These are wishes, not purposes.
Surround your purpose with eight pillars. These are the key areas of your life that must develop for your purpose to become real. The Harada Method encourages you to think beyond the obvious technical skills and include personal development, relationships, and daily habits.
For a founder, the pillars might be: Product, Revenue, Health, Network, Skills, Mindset, Relationships, Operations. For an athlete, they might look like Ohtani's: Physique, Technique, Mental, Character, Luck, and so on.
The key rule: don't make all eight pillars about the same domain. If you're building a business and all eight pillars are business functions, you've missed the point. The method works because it forces you to develop as a complete person, not just optimize one dimension of your life.
This is where the work happens. For each pillar, write eight specific, concrete actions you can take. Not vague intentions. Actions.
If you get stuck, Harada recommended looking at the four aspects (below) and asking: does this pillar address my mind, my skills, my body, and my daily life? If one aspect is missing, that's likely where your blank cells should be filled.
Harada identified four aspects that every well-formed action plan should address. These come from traditional Japanese educational philosophy and serve as a checklist to make sure your 64 actions cover your whole self, not just one dimension.
Mental strength, emotional resilience, mindset, self-belief, visualization. The psychological foundation everything else rests on.
The specific competencies you need to develop. Technical skills, knowledge acquisition, deliberate practice routines.
Physical health, energy management, sleep, nutrition, exercise. Your body is the platform for everything else.
Routines, habits, environment, relationships, time management. The daily operating system of your life.
When reviewing your 64 actions, check each pillar against these four aspects. If your "Health" pillar has eight actions about gym workouts but nothing about sleep or stress management, Shin and Seikatsu are missing. If your "Career" pillar is all skill-building but ignores mental resilience, you'll hit a ceiling when things get hard.
The complete person is the one who achieves goals. Not the person who is the most skilled, or the most fit, or the most connected — but the one who develops all four aspects in service of their purpose.
The 64 Chart tells you what to do. The daily diary tells you whether you're doing it. Harada built daily reflection directly into the method because he knew that plans without tracking are just decoration.
The diary is simple. Every day, answer three questions:
This takes five minutes. Maybe less. But it does something powerful: it creates a feedback loop between your plan and your reality. Over weeks and months, the diary reveals patterns. You'll see which actions you consistently skip, which pillars you neglect, and which habits actually stick. That data is more valuable than any planning session.
Alongside the diary, the Harada Method includes a routine checklist. This is a simple list of daily habits you commit to doing every single day, regardless of how your goal pursuit is going. Things like:
The routine checklist isn't about your goal directly. It's about building the foundation of self-discipline that makes goal achievement possible. Harada discovered that students who maintained consistent daily routines performed dramatically better than those who only focused on their specific goal actions. The routine builds the person who builds the results.
The Harada Method was never designed to be done alone. Harada built mentorship directly into the system because he observed that people who reported to someone else achieved at significantly higher rates than those who worked in isolation.
The coach's role in the Harada Method is specific:
If you don't have a formal coach, find an accountability partner. A friend, a colleague, or a mentor who's willing to review your grid with you once a week. The method's power multiplies when someone else is paying attention.
Open64 brings the Harada Method's 64 Chart to your browser. Templates to start fast, activity tracking to stay honest, and AI suggestions to fill your pillars. Free for Chrome.
Get Open64 for ChromeThe Harada Method is powerful but historically inaccessible. The original system uses paper worksheets, requires trained facilitators, and was taught primarily in Japanese corporate and educational settings. Most English-language resources are thin or paywalled.
Open64 changes that. It takes the 64 Chart — the centerpiece of the Harada Method — and puts it in every new tab you open in Chrome. Here's what that gives you:
The Harada Method works because it makes your goals concrete and visible. Open64 takes that principle and applies it to the place you already spend hours every day: your browser. No extra app to open. No habit to remember. Just your life plan, always there.
Here's the shortest path from reading this to having a working 64 Chart:
The Harada Method has been tested across cultures, industries, and age groups for over two decades. It worked for struggling middle school students in Osaka. It worked for the greatest baseball player alive. It works because it's simple, complete, and relentlessly focused on connecting daily actions to a purpose worth pursuing.
Your turn.