Systems: Secret to Success?

My Most Powerful Lesson Learned in the Last 2 Years

If I had a time machine and could go back in time and give myself one piece of advice without somehow creating a butterfly effect & altering my timeline (AKA still have my wife and son) it would be what I’m talking about in this post.

Through the sheer trial and error of figuring out how to manage my lofty ambitions, multiple businesses, numerous hobbies, being a present husband and father, high level of fitness, and everything else on my very full plate while managing a beautiful, yet highly dysfunctional brain…

…I have very confidently discovered one of the big “secrets” that allows you to be a high-achieving overachiever without going off the deep end and constantly battling against yourself & your numerous commitments.

To avoid sounding like a pedantic cliff hanger, I’ll tell you what this “secret” is before giving you my long sob story of how I came to realize this and how you can apply this to your own life.

That “secret” is SYSTEMS.

You’ve likely seen people talk about the importance of systems for achieving your goals, and even popular people like Scott Adams, have discussed the importance of systems in their books… but I don’t feel like the topic has been given enough depth/emphasis and spelled out in terms of Why and How they are so instrumental (to the level that it has almost become my singular life obsession).

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Now For that Long Sob Story…

2 years ago when I left the military I was warned about the transition to Civilian life and how challenging it can be. I completely wrote it off because I already had a full-time business, was moving back to live near my family, and had all of the major life changes “figured out”. I was completely wrong, but not in the way most people talked about.

You see, from a very early age, most of our lives are very planned out and structured in the sense that it somewhat forces you to follow a type of routine. This extends on into adulthood as you get a job and have to show up to work & take care of your other responsibilities and commitments.

This was true for me in the military where I knew I had to be awake by 5 AM every day to get ready & show up clean and shaven, on time to work out with my squad and start the work day. There was no missing this or being late as an option because, like most forms of employment, I would pay the consequences for doing so.

In the military, you pay in the form of very intense, long physical torture disguised as exercise + like almost all other normal jobs, the risk of losing pay or even termination of your employment, so we are incentivized to ensure this doesn’t happen.

And also like other jobs, you either have set hours or get told when to go home, and then you’re on your own time. During the hours you’re at work (this could also be school if you’re a student), your day is more or less dictated for you in the sense that you HAVE to be there and you have tasks that need to be done AKA in most cases, you have very little freedom to do absolutely whatever you want.

For the vast majority of the population, this continues on for most of life. Add in other commitments like having a family and responsibilities/the things you’re required to do, social life, hobbies, etc. and for the most part, your time is accounted for in the sense that you have a general timeline and schedule for when and where to do things.

For most people, these responsibilities shape how their day looks and they are in a state of reacting to the demands and the time constraints. In a general sense, this looks like waking up just in time to get ready for work and show up on time, running errands as they pop up/need to be done, or scrambling from task to task like running their kids to sports practice and then trying to somehow fit the gym in when the time is available/they have the chance.

The key point I’m trying to make here is that when you are in a state of reacting to your commitments and catering your day/time to these commitments, you are not actually in control of your day/time (and even ultimately your life) and are “going with the flow” rather than acting with intent.

I’m sure almost all of you are familiar with this and for most, this is just a part of life. However, there is a better way, and not just better… a completely life-changing, dare I say paradigm-shifting, way to approach life.

You see I gave that back story and these examples because it highlights the fact that from almost as soon as we can walk, we are conditioned this way and don’t really think about it because this is just the status quo and how most people operate.

Why I bring up my personal backstory of getting out of the military 2 years ago is because once I lost that major time commitment and structure, I was incentivized to abide by and was thrown into this world essentially being able to do/be able to work whenever/wherever I wanted. I quickly got lost—that is how foreign this concept of “systems” is in a traditional sense.

It might sound great to be able to do most things whenever/wherever you want, and it is, but if you don’t create your own structure and systems it can be very very painful until you do.

Let me just tell you, this was extremely painful for someone who has a dysfunctional neurodivergent disorder that left to their devices would procrastinate everything until the last second… but you don’t really have a “last second” (no more burpees until I puked for missing a time constraint).

Now before I lose you, this is not some guide just for those with this level of time flexibility/freedom, not at all…

Rather, because I gained this flexibility, my issues got so bad that I was brute-forced to learn every single aspect of how to function and structure our days in a way that allows us (forces might be a better word) to operate in a way that we can not only function but thrive by taking back as much control of our day/time as we can, regardless of work/family/social/whatever commitments we have.

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“Systems” Explained

If we refer back to my post on Lifestyle Design, I dance around this concept and briefly touch on it, but at the time I hadn’t quite realized how important this concept of creating systems is.

When I say systems, what I mean are the little intricacies of what you do every day like when you wake up, how much water you drink in the morning, what supplements you take, the order of your tasks, when you work out, things you have to avoid, etc. I’m talking about EVERY little thing you do.

What this means—in a good system—is that almost everything you do throughout the day should benefit whatever tasks/commitments/goals you have to get done that day.

It is a matter of:

• Deconstructing the results you want and how to get there.

• Understanding yourself and the ebb and flow of your energy/how you react to certain things.

• & almost more importantly than all things: Avoiding things you CANNOT do because they will make it harder or even impossible to get said results you want.

Take, for example, part of my system:

I suck at waking up early and getting my day started… but when I sleep in, I am miserable because of time lost and losing as many sunlight hours as I can. (This is a very weird one, but for some reason, if I miss out on time viewing the beautiful, earlier parts of the day, it makes me feel like I am wasting my time on Earth).

For this reason, I set my phone across the room with an alarm so I have to get up to turn it off which gives me a moment of clarity to remember that even though I want that extra hour of sleep, I’ll hate myself if I do it.

After this, I immediately go pee and weigh myself, if I don’t I will forget which will make it hard to track my fitness progress. Once I leave the bathroom, I already have my bottle of water and supplements out on the counter because, again, I will forget them if I don’t.

Then I take my husky and we go for a 30-minute walk because if we don’t, he is an unruly asshole the whole day. While on the walk, this lets me get my brain prepared and thinking about what I need to do that day (as well as getting the steps I need for my daily step goal AND morning sunlight which helps regulate my circadian rhythm, thus making it easier to get out of bed in the morning—see how a lot of this is coming full circle?)

Once I get back inside, I go workout in my gym because this is the only free time I have while my son is asleep; it gives me the mental energy and clarity for work and if I put it off for later in the day, life will likely pop-up and throw a wrench in those plans.

After my lift, I make my protein shake that’s mixed with carb powder and my greens powder because well obviously I need fuel to repair and begin the recovery process following the lift, but specifically the shake because it’s easy on my stomach which gives me more energy and clarity than a heavier, solid meal.

Ok, so this is just the first few hours of my day, but you can see a key theme here: everything is done deliberately in a way that is all flowing together to set my day up for as much success as possible.

If I zoom out to my week, and even further, (I keep monthly, quarterly, yearly, and even 1 and 5-year plans) I have systems for how I set this up in a way that it is also working for me rather than against me & set up to help me reach my goals as efficiently as possible.

Now this is the real “secret sauce” of building great systems that set you up for massive success...

While I know most people my age (in their 20s) can barely fathom the idea of what they’re doing next week, what I’ve done is taken the exact results that I want to achieve in 5 years (that are realistic and will greatly improve mine and my family’s lives) and look at exactly what that will entail & what needs to be done to get there.

From there, I break down those goals/tasks into pieces that I think can realistically be done in a year. I then break that down into what that means I need to do in the next 12-18 weeks. Next, what needs to be done in the next 4-12 weeks to get there. Finally, in terms of goals, what I hope to achieve/what needs to get done in the next 1-4 weeks.

In terms of my week, I plan and spread all of those tasks across the week in a way that makes it almost impossible to mess up, meaning realistic timelines (we always overestimate what we can accomplish in a short period of time like a week) and schedule what days I do certain tasks in a way that is simplified and also caters to the other things I need/want to do that day.

Finally…

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: needless to say, I break the next day down the night before into a list of things that need to be done (and again, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to be realistic in what you can do in a single day).

A huge component of this system is I have a “Daily Checklist” of things that I know I need to do every single day that will take me to where I need to be in a week, a month, 6 months, a year, 5 years…

These are the things I call my “intangibles”.

Intangibles are things as simple as hitting my workout, getting my steps, hitting my macro/calorie goals, taking care of my clients, fulfilling orders, and getting my quality time at exactly 7 PM at the park with my son and wife…

My daily to-do list might look different day-to-day, but these things never change because regardless of my daily to-do list, these are the things I must do to keep the boat afloat.

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Self-Assessing & Application

Now enough about me. Let’s talk about YOU.