Systems in Life
In the army, I was taught that people rarely rise to the occasion, they fall to the level of their training. Towards that, I’ve built and maintain systems in my life to train, grow and sustain a foundational level.
In army, leading guys
How do you convince guys your age, younger, or older than you – to do something difficult? Something they frankly, don’t want to do? Sure you can pull rank and order them to do it, but there’s a massive difference between them doing things full-heartedly and half-heartedly. How can you and your platoon trust the weakest and least confident person with a gun? How can you ensure your troops know how to be safe even when pushed to their mental and physical limits?
Note
Especially initially, some might not always be followed 100%. However, if layered well-enough and with some good habit building – it becomes easier and more effortless to follow.
Here’s some I made,
- 🫂Reoccurring catch-up reminders: for close friends, family, mentors and people I care about.
- ✅Personal task management software: There’s around ~350 tasks on it. You learn to prioritise, and the advantage is in more execution over planning.
- 🛏️Schedule sleep into the calendar: +scheduled auto-off bedroom smart-lights. This helps hit 100% Joey the next day.
- 💪Constantly packed gym-bag with a book ready to grab-and-go: During workouts, I don’t carry my phone. I used to listen to podcasts during workouts – now I read a book between sets and use a $20 digital watch to time-keep.
- 🌱Automated personal finance pipeline
- 💧Two massive cups of water always-filled on desk: +drink a glass upon waking up
- 🍦Scheduled Ice cream Day: Army nutrition trick that has reduced my junk food intake by a lot
- ⏸️ Visible thought triggers (AKA targeted positive advertising): Mindset makes reality. I found it helpful to install triggers to prompt certain mindsets over time. I’ve placed thoughts/quotes/stick-notes that give pause and help reframe my thinking in my room and on devices.
- 🔁Hackathon Feedback Loop: applying BARDARPAR (Before Action Review, During Action review, Post Action Review) from army and developing a system for personal and team growth in hackathons. I maintain a doc with 26k words of feedback, reflections, and takeaways from +35 hackathons.
- 💡Ideas Log: Inspiration is fleeting, while GoogleDocs is near eternal. 27 pages of ideas since ~2016
I also enjoy learning dance choreographies (1 million dance studio) and recording song covers of my terrible singing.
Are there Systems that work against you?
Conversely, there are Systems – both self-inflicted and from the environment, that work against you.
Those can make you less healthy, less productive, more addicted, and hinder you from living to your full potential.Identify those, and build counter-systems against them – free yourself.