“Losers have goals. Winners have systems.”
Scott Adams

Systems that beat habits and goals, every time

Anyone who knows me, who has worked with me or who has heard me speak will know that I am a great believer in systems.

Systems for performance. Systems for management and leadership. Systems for self-mastery. Systems for personal transformation. And I could go on. But you get the idea: systems for any area of your life and work that you would want to improve. Significantly. Consistently. And over the long term.

Those characteristics of significant, consistent and long-term performance are sounding a lot like habits. And those too I am in the habit (!) of putting time and attention into – like many self-help practitioners. But unlike many other self-help practitioners, I would assert systems as important as – and perhaps more so – than habits.

What’s my evidence for this? In my own life, it’s simply this: that systems have been the bedrock of the best success habits I’ve formed, practised and instilled; that my systems have been the saving grace when my best success habits have been threatened by the succession of a less-than-ideal habit; and that my systems have always outlived those habits.

And let’s go further: my systems also outlive my goals. Goals have a timeline; systems are eternal. A way of being. And that’s what the quote from Scott Adams speaks to: winners setup systems that create a shift in the being that will always beat the person who attempts to achieve goals without a system in place.

What is a success system?

What do I mean by a “system”?

Essentially: any setup, most-often outside of myself and in the physical world, which makes my declared success near-inevitable.

An example might include my gym bad and gym-routine notebook. A system that guarantees I’m in the gym with little or no friction, am there with all the gear I need, and have absolute clarity on what I’ll be hitting that day.

An example might include the template you’ve carefully prepared for taking meeting minutes that ensures you capture and can easily recall the most salient points; neatly collates key actions, their owners and timelines for completion; makes disseminating notes to attendees after the meeting a breeze; and guarantees you’ll have an accurate record, should you need to revisit.

An example might include the accountability meeting you and I agree to hold on a weekly basis, keeping us both accountable to hitting our previous week’s commitment for number of sales calls made.

Complicated? No. Powerful? Yes.

And we know systems are all-powerful because we have them to thank for wherever we are, right now.

We are masters of running perfect systems

We are masters of running a perfect system.

Take the sum total of all your thinking, action, behaviours and state, as at this moment and as in relation to some area of your life and work. In that area, you may be performing exactly as you’d wish; or perhaps it’s otherwise. And now, notice that your sum total of thinking, action, behaviour and state, when viewed as a “system”, is perfect for the results you’re currently getting.

If it wasn’t, your results would be other. But they’re not. And perhaps your results suggest keeping your system exactly where it is, tweaking it slightly, or throwing it out all-together and starting again. But regardless, let’s not disown our complicity in the results we say we do and don’t want.

The learning? Whatever our results, we can reduce the sum total of our thinking, action, behaviour and state into a system and call that system perfect. What different results? Create a different system.

For anything and everything. And all levels: micro and macro.

A perfect system for extraordinary success

My invitation to you fight now is to set today as the first day of a year of extraordinary success. And in a year’s time, when you look back on this most extraordinary year, you’ll notice the powerful systems you’ve embedded that’s made that self-declared success inevitable, joyful and – dare we say it – effortless.

Here’s how you did it …

1. You tapped into the BEING

Start by thinking about “the kind of person who …” has the success that you want. Notice what that kind of person does. How they operate. How they move through the day, week, month and year. What are the systems that kind of person has in place?

2. You switched the filters on

From a place of being, you trained your mind to always be looking for the opportunity to systematise your success. Whether that was introducing new systems, overwriting outdated systems and discarding no-longer-needed systems, your filters are fully switched-on to curating the perfect systemic setup.

3. You set it up, then tweaked from there

You notice that a key change in the past year was not over-thinking the system, but rather getting the bare-bones together, implementing immediately – and tweaking from there. You quickly learnt that no system can be designed purely in mind or on paper; it needs to be put out there in the world and see what survives the enemy. Your golden rule this year was: BEGIN IT.

4. You found the right rhythm

That process of tweaking your systems taught you the importance of finding the right rhythm, tempo and cadence. You became a master of adjusting the system so it suited you and your success perfectly. You understood how getting these elements even just a little wrong would significantly disrupt the effectiveness of your system – and therefore you. Rhythm matters.

5. You introduced moments of stillness

And perhaps the biggest lesson of this extraordinarily successful year is the importance of incorporating stillness into everything of significance you’ve chosen to focus on. You learnt that the most powerful systems are a combination of doing shit – and NOT doing shit. Just like the universe is made-up of things – and not things. Those periods of stillness have been the cornerstone of your greatest successes this year – and made inevitable by their incorporation into your foundational systems.

Here’s to your next extraordinarily successful year. Driven by your extraordinarily powerful success systems.