Build Systems for Who You Are Now, Not Who You Wish You Would Be

Introduction

If you feel like achieving the vision of yourself feels like pushing a boulder up a mountain for it to just roll back to where you began, then you may be trying to create a system for change that assumes you already are the person you want to be. Instead, you should consider creating a system for who you are now.

Thinking in Systems

This article assumes a certain understanding of systems thinking or thinking systemically. For the uninitiated, systems thinking generally means looking at a problem or circumstances holistically, considering how an interaction and change in one part can influence other parts of the system as well as the system as a whole.

One way to think systemically is pondering the Butterfly Effect: considering why a small change can cause a cascade of cause-and-effect that results in a big influence elsewhere. Or consider how the characters and various storylines come together in a Guy Ritchie crime thriller or the interweaving steps of any number of heist movies. Or, maybe, think of a Rube Goldberg Machine and how all the various arbitrary knick-knacks coalesce to do something simple like pour a cup of coffee.

The important part is to understand that there can be any number of variables that can mix and interact in various ways to ultimately create a system that is or does something.

Rethinking an Old Proverb

There is an American proverb that goes, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” It sounds nice, and it seems right. Ignoring the elitist overtones in the statement, to a certain degree, the proverb is right in a socially mobile society. A fast food worker who wants to be a lawyer going about his life dressed in a suit will probably be invited to more functions at an elevated socioeconomic level of society than if he walked around in his work uniform.

But that fast food worker is also not going to wear a suit to work for very practical reasons. He is not going to want to get grease on his expensive suit, and those fancy leather-soled shoes could cause him to slip face first into the grill. He would also probably stick out awkwardly in a suit if he were to go out to happy hour with his co-workers, alienating him from the people he currently relates to.

Systems Built on Aspirations Are a Perfectionist’s Trap

The same logic can apply to the systems we build into our lives. There is a tendency to want to design the perfect system that reflects the exact kind of person we want to be rather than the person that we are.

Think of a person whose current system for keeping track of important dates and appointments relies on the kindness of their spouse to keep track and tell them when something is coming up. This person wants to manage their time better, so they go out and buy a planner for the first time and immediately try to schedule the next several weeks of their life. They also fully plan and expect to carry that planner around everywhere with them (even though they have never done so before) and to keep it up to date with each new obligation or engagement (another new habit) and do a strict and thorough review each morning (even though they do nothing of the sort in the morning currently).

Or consider a person who typically wakes up 15 minutes before they have to leave for work and wants to get into shape. This person buys an expensive membership at a gym that is on their way to their work. Unable to find time elsewhere, they plan on waking up 2 hours early each and every day so that they can squeeze in an hour-long workout before work.

You know who these people are, you may be one of them, and you probably see the problem in both scenarios. The problem with these attempts is that these people imagine what they want to be and answer the question of how that person would behave, then they immediately try to become that person by designing a system for that aspirational version of themselves.

For the person who wants to manage their time better, their aspirational version of themselves would obviously have a planner that they would set aside time to keep up with it every day. And the person who wants to get in shape, well that in-shape aspirational version of themselves obviously wakes up 2 hours early to get to the gym. But neither of these people are that aspirational version of themselves, yet. A vision is good, but expecting overnight perfection is a recipe for failure.

The Fix: Designing an MVP System for the First Incremental Change

The goal to achieve lasting change is designing a system to implement an incremental improvement, a kind of minimally viable product for whatever you are working towards. The idea of a minimally viable product, borrowed from the business and technology world, is a product that develops the most basic functionality to present to testers and evaluate it. The concept also provides an important milestone that helps prevent perfection from being the enemy of the good. In other words, setting the objective to a minimally viable product helps prevent developers from getting bogged down in features that would delay progress and moving onto the next step.

The concept applied to your own personal systems is useful for two reasons:

1. It gives you the opportunity to test and evaluate your new system yourself; and
2. It helps you avoid the trap of becoming stuck in the creation phase of a system because it is ultimately for the perfect, aspirational vision of yourself.

When applying the idea of an MVP to changing your habits or reinventing yourself, you should end up with a system that implements an incremental change in your life that compounds over time. (See e.g. Atomic Habits by James Clear.)

For example, the person who wants to be better about time management resolves to just jot down a to-do list in their phone’s notes app. Or the person who wants to get into shape, starts by waking up 15 minutes earlier to do some stretches. Then, once they feel comfortable in their new way of life, they can evaluate what is working and what is not and figure out the next step from there.

What You Can Do

Here’s how you can produce an MVP system for achieving your goals:

1. Identify and clearly define your goals.
2. Clarify your goals by asking why you want to achieve what you want to achieve, then ask why that is the reason; refine your goal and its definition accordingly.
3. Make a road map and break down the steps you will need to reach your goal.
4. Figure out the small steps that you can take right now towards that goal.
5. Craft your system for achieving just a small, incremental step.
6. Implement the system, including a timeline for when you check in with yourself.

Why Focus on Just the First Incremental Step?

Focusing so much effort on just the first incremental step is well worth it. The system you set up for yourself in the first incremental step lays the foundation and begins the momentum for each step afterward.

It is like starting in first gear on a bike. Once you get moving, first gear is largely useless for continuing to propel you forward. But when starting from a stop, first gear provides that initial push that creates the momentum to make switching into higher gears smoother and easier.

What’s next?

In upcoming posts, we will walk through examples of taking these steps to give you an idea of what it may look like for you to apply them. Subscribe or stay tuned for the next post.