Systems Mindset

Table of contents

The goal-setting fashion

Nowadays, almost everyone has goals to chase. We set goals to lose weight, to read more books, or to develop a new skill, among others. In our professional lives, we’re also expected to meet various objectives such as KPIs, OKRs, and similar performance metrics.

Goal-setting has become a common practice in our lives. Many people believe that if they want to achieve something, they need to set an ambitious goal and stay motivated to achieve it.

However, I have observed that many people set goals only to forget about them after a while. Many others struggle to achieve their goals without feeling happiness in the process. Few people actually achieve their goals and go back to their old habits after a while.

The problem with goals

The problem with goals is that they will not really let you achieve what you want. Keep your eyes on the goal, and you will not achieve it. Even worse, goals set you up to a dichotomy of success or failure. If you not achieve the goal, you feel like a failure.

Before you achieve the goal, you will not feel happy. So, we often sacrifice our happiness for the sake of achieving our goals, but never realize that doing the things that we want may make us happy. Reading a good book, keeping a healthy diet, or learning a new skill can be enjoyable activities. But we often forget about them because we are too focused on achieving our goals.

We always sacrifice our happiness to chase our goals, telling ourselves that we will be successful and happy once we achieve them. The truth is that many of us (if not all) feel happy and successful only for a short term, and go back to our old habits after a while.

Willpower might not help

Because we can’t feel happy while chasing our goals, a common advice is to have more willpower. We are told that we need to be more disciplined, more focused, and more motivated to achieve our goals.

But willpower is, as far as we know, a limited resource that can be depleted. Ego depletion is the idea that self-control or willpower is an exhaustible resource. When people use self-control to resist temptation, the self-control strength is reduced. It is like a muscle that can be exhausted.[1]

Building a system

Winners and losers have goals, setting goals will not make you a winner. And willpower might not a reliable tool, too. So, what can we do to achieve what we want?

The answer is to build a system. As James Clear said in his book Atomic Habits, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” We need to build a system that will help us achieve what we want.

But what is systems thinking? How to build a system?

Systems thinking is to see the big picture and understand what things influence you. Building a system is to optimize all those things to help you achieve what you want. A system can be consist of your evironment, your workflow, or you habits, etc.

• Optimize your environment Things that are good for us are often difficult to do and hard to maintain. We frequently face temptations, distractions, and interruptions. It’s difficult to maintain a Zen attitude in a life full of these challenges.

  As we mentioned before, willpower is a limited resource that can be depleted. Spending more time in a tempting environment will make it harder to resist temptation. The people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least. Don’t try to make yourself more disciplined; instead, create a more disciplined environment. The practical way to achieve what you want is to optimize your environment to reduce your exposure to temptation.

• Build a workflow

  To paraphrase Sönke Ahrens in his book “How to Take Smart Notes”[2], having a meaningful and well-defined task beats willpower every time. Success is not the result of strong willpower and the ability to overcome resistance, but rather the result of smart working environments that avoid resistance in the first place. Instead of struggling with adverse dynamics, highly productive people deflect resistance, much like judo champions.

  Try to deconstruct your job into well-defined, tiny tasks to reduce the resistance to finishing them. Completing tasks will bring contentment, and contentment leads to enjoyment. Enjoy the process, and motivation will come naturally.

• Develop good habits Habits are the foundation of our lives. They allow us to background process many tasks. But we often develop many habits throughout our lives without thinking about them. As the psychologist Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

  Building a system could developing your good habits. If you align your habits with your long-term goals, you will achieve what you want without volitional effort.

  Good habits may be hard to start, and bad habits hard to break. But as the saying goes, “The sweeter the first fruit of a habit, the more bitter are its later fruits”[3], and vice versa.

Continuous optimization

Systems thinking means looking beyond your goals and willpower to see the bigger picture. Building a system involves continuously examining, reflecting on, and optimizing everything around you to help you achieve what you want.

Environment, workflow, and habits are just a few elements you can optimize. You can also seek feedback for intentional practice, optimize your energy, manage your mental resource, and explore many other improvements. By focusing on your system, you’ll enjoy the optimization process and continuously grow. Whether or not you achieve your specific goals, you’ll find happiness and success in the journey itself.

Notes:

[1] Muraven M, Baumeister RF. Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: does self-control resemble a muscle?

[2] Ahrens, Sönke. How to take smart notes: One simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking. Sönke Ahrens, 2022.

[3] The French economist Frédéric Bastiat said, “The sweeter the first fruit of a habit, the more bitter are its later fruits.”