🎯 Systems vs Goals
+ Some missing nuance | Wisdom Letter #278
“You don’t rise to the level of you goals, you fall to the level of you systems”
James Clear, Atomic Habits
Its the first week of the new year, you may be tempted to set some resolutions and goals for 2025.
You may have goals around your health (like losing weight, gaining muscle)
Or around your wealth (like reaching a certain net worth)
But as the gurus will tell you - just setting a goal is not enough, you need to set systems to achieve those goals.
After all, as James Clear says in Atomic Habits, winners and losers have the same goals, they differ only because of their systems.
Ever since this book became popular, it has become cool to look down upon goals, and focus solely on systems (or habits).
That’s what every YouTuber is teaching now for the last few years.
Systems »»» Goals
And its a good concept, its effective.
But we should be wary of setting up systems just for the sake of following them.
All systems must be in service of certain goals.
Otherwise, your life can very quickly start to feel like running on a hamster wheel - no goals, no purpose.
Goals give you a clear direction in life. They give you a higher purpose to strive for - something bigger than you, something that motivates you, and pulls you forward as you run through your systems.
Of course, there are some caveats around goal setting you should be careful of. Otherwise goals can become nightmares.
Goals should be backed by common sense.
Which means goals:
Should be practical and achievable
Serve your vision for your life
Should NOT be the only thing in your life
There is more to life than achieving goals (or building systems)
While every guru on YouTube wants you to become the most productive person on the planet. Its up to you to do decide what being productive actually means to you.
If you’re a single mom, with a 9-5 and a side hustle then your productivity will be very different compared to a college student and athlete.
The little nuance that gets lost in the whole systems vs goals debate is that the larger issue is not really about systems or goals, its about what kind of life do we want to live?
And are our habits, routines, ambitions, actions serving the life we want to live?
Take a few days to reflect on this question - What kind of life do I want to build?
Once you have that answer, then set the goals that will help you achieve that life.
And finally, then start creating systems to achieve those goals.
Your life is your work of art - your goals and systems should be in service to it.
Hope this makes sense to you.
I’ve written more about Atomic Habits and other ideas from it before -
Whenever you’re ready, here’s how we can help you -
Cheers 🙌
That’s it for today.
See you next week 👋
Cheers,
Ayush & Aditi