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Want to do 160 Productive Hours a Month? You Need Systems, Not Goals
Systems vs. goals
- If you do something every day, it’s a system.
- If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.
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Key Ideas
A system is...
- Something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of success regardless of the immediate outcome.
- A collection of goals, tools, habits, and methods is not the same as a purposeful system.
- A working system allows you to reduce your tasks to a manageable set of inputs and outputs, and establish some predictability.
Systems vs. goals
- If you do something every day, it’s a system.
- If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.
James Clear
To build an effective system...
- Take yourself mentally from step one all the way to the final step.
- At each step, ask yourself what tools, resources, information, or people you might need access to.
- Put them in a designated space or build in the easiest possible method for getting what you need when you need it.
- As part of the system, plan a regular time to restock the consumable resources that the system requires.
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17 hours of productivity weekly
People work an average of 45 hours a week; they consider about 17 of those hours to be unproductive.
Tim Ferriss's tips for productivity
- Manage your moods: If you start the day calm it's easy to get the right things done and focus.
- Don't check email in the morning.
- Before you try to do it faster, ask whether it should be done at all.
- Focus is nothing more than eliminating distractions.
- Have a personal system; most productive people have a routine.
- Define your goals for the day the night before.
Don't check emails in the morning
If you check your emails first thing in the morning, **you're setting yourself up to react.
You're not planning your day and prioritizing, you're giving your best hours to someone else's goals, not yours.
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Focus on Systems Instead of Goals
Most goals are out of our control. We have limited control to reach them. In a system, your focus is on all the parts that you do control. And system is a fancy word for “repeatable process”...
Leverage the Compound Effect
When you focus on developing systems and work every day, your work compounds over time, developing exponential growth.
The more advantages you create, the more your next advantages pay off. A 1% gain every day compounds to almost 38x increase over a year.
Measure Output, Not Input
Systems are the best way to progress since they reward effort and we control all the variables. However, we need to have a sense of direction in those efforts, to know what we are trying to accomplish.
Writing daily with no objective is just practice. If you want to achieve something, you need to commit to a certain output, like publishing a post on your blog weekly. At the end of the day, a system is a way to control how to achieve an output.
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Having No Routine
Having no routine or structure is so much more draining mentally, physically, and emotionally than any routine could ever be.
Why You Need a Routine
- It gives you structure, builds forward-moving habits, and creates momentum that will carry you on the days when you feel like you don't have the strength to carry yourself.
- Following a daily routine can help you establish priorities, limit procrastination, keep track of goals, and even make you healthier.
- It lowers your reliance on willpower and motivation.
Start the day with a mantra
... to get you into a positive mood for the day ahead. Put your mind in a good state right away, because left unchecked it will try to tell you the things that are wrong.
Pick a phrase or question that resonates with you. It could be as simple as smiling and saying "thank you" out loud, acknowledging that you have been gifted with another day.
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