Systems

9/4/25

A week ago, I realized such an elementary, obvious truth that has since changed the way I work.

I had goal X, which I’d been working towards for a while but wasn’t getting anywhere. Ultimately the frustration of no clear markers of progress led me on the floor with my head in my hands unable to figure out what I was doing wrong. So, on this frustrating night, I talked it out and found the problem - my inputs were nowhere near where they should’ve been for the goal. And I had no system.

Here’s the thing. There are your inputs, and there are your desired outcomes. The gap between your inputs and desired outcomes is anxiety. If you ramp up your inputs, your anxiety decreases.

But ramping up inputs isn’t straightforward. It doesn’t just mean, go do more work. It requires a system.

The next morning, I looked at goal X, looked at my inputs in a spreadsheet, was humbled and decided that I needed to figure out a sustainable but consistent system of ramping up inputs.

The fix? The thing that broke my mental block? 4 pieces of paper glued together.

That’s right, I made a poster. With 100 boxes for 100 days in it. And like Pavlov and Pavlov’s dog, I decided that for every day I add to the input box, I get to color a box green.

This poster took me 20 minutes and increased hours of productivity. The problem before my poster was that my mental model had the instructions “go achieve goal X.”

This meant I was thinking about goal X all the time - at the gym, before bed, on the weekends - without any clear boundaries of when work is over. With that poster, my mental model is now - “I need to color this box green today.” And that’s it. Done. Boom. Out of head. No optimizing for anything at the gym.

Our brains are really bad with vague goals. Systems remove decision fatigue, which makes everything easier, because you just have to do the job.

You could figure this out in Atomic Habits or some self help book, but I like that I had to experience life before and after a system to see how much it helps.

By the way I have no system for these blogs.