How to Build Systems to Actually Achieve Your Goals

How is someone meant to balance working

full-time with constantly learning and

upskilling while getting enough sleep

while exercising and taking care of your

health and then spending time with your

loved ones and then having free time for

hobbies? Is that even possible? Yes, it

is. But only if you think in systems.

I've spent over a decade coaching

thousands of professionals to learn

efficiently and succeed in their careers

while having enough time and freedom to

live life. And in my experience,

thinking in systems is the secret to

regaining control and freedom so that

you're not stuck on that hamster wheel

of constantly feeling busy while at the

same time not making progress on the

things that you really care about. So,

in this video, I'll explain what

thinking in systems actually means, and

I'll share with you some simple ways to

build systems for your own goals

utilizing the same principles I use when

I'm coaching clients. So, what does

thinking in systems

actually mean?

The point of thinking in systems is that

you reduce your reliance on thinking in

terms of willpower

and motivation. The aim is to reduce

your dependency on these two things. And

instead what we do is that we build

processes

that automatically help us to achieve

the types of results that we're looking

for. And once you find the processes

that actually work, you then chain these

processes together and now you've got a

system. Most people don't think in

systems. Most people are operating in

terms of intentions and tasks. So

thinking I need to exercise today or I

need to get more sleep or I need to

finish that course. But when you're

busy, it is difficult to turn these

intentions into reality. Now if you're

more proactive, you go from these

intentions

And then you turn these intentions into

plans.

So for example, it's not just I need to

read more. It's I'm going to spend an

hour every evening to dedicate to

reading. And it's not just I need to

exercise more. It's okay when I get home

from work, I'm going to use that time to

exercise every day. Okay, I've made a

plan. But what happens if you're too

tired? What happens if something comes

up? What happens on day three of your

plan and then you realize you haven't

even started yet? At this point, you

just feel frustrated and disappointed in

yourself because yet again, your plans

haven't come to fruition. So, let's look

at this same problem through the lens of

thinking in systems. And there are three

principles that I want you to keep in

mind whenever you're thinking in

systems, which will help you to build a

system for your own goals. The first

principle when we're thinking in systems

is to think about things holistically.

You look at your intention and then you

think about all the factors that would

influence the success of that goal and

that intention. So you are proactively

expecting that plan to fail. You're

expecting to be tired and lazy and for

things to come up and you're asking

yourself what can I do about that? And

so when I'm coaching someone to build

their own systems, one of the first

things I'll do is I will ask them about

all the things they've tried in the past

and then why that didn't work for them

and I'm paying close attention to what

they did, but also how they responded to

that obstacle or that challenge. It's

important that you do this step because

you need this list of all the possible

barriers because there's a high chance

that the system you end up creating is

going to have to account for all of

these factors. And this is actually

directly tied to the second principle,

which is that you should build your

system for repeatability.

You do not want to develop a system of

doing something that relies on like all

the stars aligning. You want it to work

on the worst day. And so if you think

about your intention and then the plans

that you have made, you can evaluate

these plans in terms of how repeatable

they are on a bad day and ask yourself,

does it rely on willpower or motivation

for me to execute on this plan? And for

the overwhelming majority of the clients

that I work with, most of the plans that

are created usually require you to

inject motivation and willpower to make

it happen. And that is a violation of

the second principle which is to build

for repeatability. You want to make sure

that there is as little friction as

possible. And so what happens when we

work with these two principles and then

think in systems is that you actually

end up sort of cycling back and forth

between these two principles. You figure

out something that is high effort that

means that you know you're going to rely

on this willpower. And then you think

about ways to avoid that. What are ways

that I can make it easier? And then you

go back and ask yourself, okay, well,

what are the challenges? What are the

obstacles? What are the other factors

that might make that plan not work? So,

for example, there's this accountant

that I was working with last year who

was studying for their chartered

accountancy exams, which is a pretty

dense exam, and they're working

full-time as well. And their plan to

begin with was that they were going to

do a bit of studying for their CA exams

every day after work as soon as they got

home. Now, this plan failed like all the

time because there's too much traffic

and sometimes he gets too tired on his

drive home and then he gets home and

there's family and he has to, you know,

prepare dinner and then after dinner

he's like too tired and too sleepy. He

just wants to relax. And so, one

solution to that, which is the common

one, is to say, okay, well, you just

need to like dig deep and then try

harder. You know, forget it if you're

tired. You know, who cares if you're

tired? Just do it anyway. And yes, that

can work for a period of time, but

personally, I don't believe that that is

sustainable. And it's also kind of like

a not a pleasant way to live every day.

So instead, when we think in systems

holistically and for repeatability, we

look at that problem and we say, "Okay,

sure. What can we do about that? Perhaps

we can uh stay at work for longer after

work." And then you you beat the

traffic, you do the work and the study

that you need to do in your office and

then you come home after that. So that's

us trying to reduce the amount of

effort, tackle some of these barriers

that come up in terms of feeling too

tired, not enough energy. And so we go

back here and think, okay, well, what

are the reasons why that might not work?

So in this case, it's if I come home

that late, then my entire family has to

push back their dinner time. Could that

work? Could you have a conversation with

your family and maybe they're all fine

with it? Maybe they can just push back

dinner by an hour and it's no big deal

and then we've won. So that was one

option. And we explored another option.

Okay, could we just study another time

of the day? Could you study before work

in the morning? The issue is, well, then

I'm not going to get enough sleep. Okay,

so could you sleep earlier to get enough

sleep? Well, I can't because in the

evening, whatever. Okay, could you

change your nighttime routine to make

that happen? So, you see, we're

constantly bouncing back and forth

between looking for that loweffort

solution and then going back to think

about all the reasons why it might not

work until we arrive at this combination

that allows us to lock in that success.

And what's really important with this

process is that you have to think about

it as a series of problems to solve.

Just because your first solution isn't

perfect doesn't mean that there is no

solution. There is some combination of

solutions that will work. Your role when

you're thinking in systems is to look

for that combination until you figure it

out. And this is a process that I

personally repeated hundreds of times,

which eventually is what allowed me to

work full-time as a doctor while running

a business full-time uh and then doing

my masters full-time while going to the

gym and having a social life and

spending time with my family and getting

8 to nine hours of sleep every night.

And often one of the biggest things I do

now when I'm coaching someone is that I

simply am more committed to looking for

that solution for longer than they

normally might. And a lot of the time

the solution we come to from this

thinking process involves a certain

level of discomfort.

But this is actually fine. In fact, this

is a good thing. The fact that a

solution feels uncomfortable means it's

different than what we're used to doing.

and getting a different result to what

we're used to getting is actually the

whole point of thinking in systems. And

what I found is that the discomfort of

making the change and acting on the

solution is often not as bad as the

discomfort of not making the change. Or

it may be uncomfortable to change your

nighttime routine so that you can sleep

one or two hours earlier. Yes, that's

uncomfortable. Sure. But it's not

uncomfortable versus comfortable. It's

uncomfortable versus even more

uncomfortable because if you don't make

those changes, you have to live with the

stress and the pressure and the anxiety

and the disappointment of never being

able to make meaningful progress on

these things that matter to you. Now, as

you do this process and you go back and

forth between these two principles, you

will find that your intentions and your

plans become much clearer and much more

specific. Your plans are not just

general statements about the fact that

you're going to do something at a

certain time. It covers contingencies.

If I'm tired, I'm going to do this. If

I'm not tired, I'm going to do this. You

will learn so much about yourself and

how you respond to different challenges

that you will also learn how you can

make it easier for yourself to just do

the things that you need to do. The way

you follow your plans and create habits

and achieve your goals becomes much more

fluid and dynamic, adapting to the

unexpected challenges of life rather

than having this rigid approach which

constantly butts up against it and the

only thing holding it up is your

unwavering willpower which will waver.

Now, this is something that I've been

doing for years, and I've been helping

people to build their own systems for

years as well, and I've picked up a lot

of little tips and tricks that make it

easier to build systems for certain

goals and overcome certain obstacles.

Now, some of these things I share on

YouTube, but another place that I share

them is in my free weekly newsletter.

These are emails, newsletters that I

write up with my fingers myself. You not

chat GPT generated uh where I think

about what are the things that I wish I

had known when I was first building my

systems and learning to learn

effectively and manage my time more

effectively. What are the biggest needle

movers that allowed me to learn

effectively and advance my career while

maintaining that balance in life? And I

summarize those in these emails and I

send them to you for free every single

week. So, if you're interested in

getting some of those insights, then

I'll leave a link for you to sign up in

the description below. Now, on to the

final principle. At this point, if

you're just doing the first two, you

will succeed. Each iteration of your

plan and your system will just get

better and better until you just don't

have any obstacles left. But this final

principle is what will allow that system

to stay with you and evolve for life.

And it makes it much easier to just

maintain this system. And so I call this

peeling the band-aid. So peel the

band-aids.

Your first system that you build from

this process is going to be full of

band-aids. So for example, let's say

that a problem you have uh with carrying

out your plan is that you always feel

too tired and you struggle to focus. So

the first solution might be to take a

nap during the day and to use a timer

when you're working to try to increase

your focus. These are band-aid solutions

because they help you right now in the

short term without addressing the

underlying issue. The reason you're

tired is because you're not getting

enough sleep. The reason that you can't

focus is because your attention span is

terrible. And the reason we want to

remove band-aid solutions even though

they can serve us in the short term is

because it just overbloatates our

system. And if possible, we want to

remove the limitations and conditions

for us to succeed. You know what? If you

don't have time for a nap, what if you

don't have a timer available for you?

Well, in that case, your just plan just

fails for that day. So, while these

band-aid solutions do give us a benefit

right now, they should be a temporary

solution while we work on solving the

underlying problems. And often uh

working on these underlying issues

involves a change in habits

which means because it involves

unlearning and retraining your habits,

it's going to take time. And so the very

act of changing your habits so that you

can one day remove these band-aid

solutions should actually be part of

your system. And so this changing habits

actually ends up becoming another

intention and then we plug that into our

system. So for example, yes, we might

have figured out that taking a nap and

using a timer is helpful for us right

now. We can use that. But then at the

same time, we think about how we can

improve our sleep habits and how we can

train our attention span. That becomes

our new goal. And then we go through to

these first two steps again to work that

into our system. And by doing this, it

means that the system we create ends up

being effective for us not only in the

short term but also in the long term. So

these are the three principles for

thinking in systems. And it may seem

like a lot of work and a lot of thinking

and you know all very complicated to

create this system. But the crucial

thing you have to understand is that it

is the exact same amount of effort. It's

the same amount or less discomfort. All

we're saying is that there is a

different way that you can direct that

time and effort which is much more

likely to help you achieve your goal and

finally feel like you have a bit more

time and freedom in your life. Now, if

you're a busy professional with lots to

learn and the time spent learning is

sucking away that time and freedom from

your life, then you might want to check

out this video where I teach you how to

create a learning system so that you can

develop deep, meaningful knowledge for

huge workloads in half the time.