Systems Instead of Goals

One of the most important contributors to success is productive daily habits. It really is all about consistency in the small things. In doing them over and over again. Which is a shame because we are not really taught how to develop productive habits intentionally through the course of our lives, which means we end up unintentionally developing unproductive habits instead.

When we are students for example, we aren't encouraged to come up with our own structure for the day, because we are supposed to follow the school's structure. They tell you what to do and when to do it. When we get older and have a job we still aren't supposed to have out own routine, because we are supposed to follow our work's routine. Like everything else essential to success, if we are going to learn how to develop good habits then we are going to have to learn it on our own, with the insight of people who have actually mastered the craft.

I was listening to a podcast earlier today and they said a quote that was particularly interesting on this topic and it was the idea that you needed to develop “systems instead of goals”. What a fascinating perspective. How often do we set goals and fail to meet them? How often do we set resolutions or objectives and fall short? Most people have an amazing talent to radically overestimate where they can be in a month and disastrously underestimate where they can be in a year, or two, or five. Perhaps this is why. To be clear, we all have the ability to set habits and systems and we use this ability all the time, it is just essential to master using this consciously. That’s all.

Once we decide where we want to go and what we want to be, we should then distill what is necessary to achieve this down into five or six simple daily practices and focus on getting them done everyday. This would be a far more productive use of time and energy than continually setting and resetting huge over arching goals. You can still set goals, but choose to focus on what you can do now, today, in this moment. “One day at a time” is always the best moto.