Systems Vs Goals? Successful People Align Systems To Goals

Systems vs Goals?

Systems vs goals? No, you must build and align systems with your goals – this is what makes you successful in life!

The self-help industry has pushed goals as the holy grail for success: big goals, SMART goals, many small goals, one moonshot goal. Unfortunately, setting goals has long been a hobby of mine, but very few, if any, get accomplished.

As Scott Adams, in “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” explains – for every person who is successful through goal setting, there are many more failures. Goals by themselves are of little value unless we take meaningful action to accomplish them.

This is where systems come in: systems for success are a collection of habits, routines and workflows that help us take meaningful actions needed to accomplish a goal. Small, consistent, systematic steps to the goal.

However, if you examine what you do every day, you will realize that while we are creatures of habit (roughly 70% of our day is routine or habitual), these habits are not necessarily helping us get better – our self-growth and improvement are mostly stagnant.

Systems vs Goals: What is the Difference?

A system is a set of actions that you perform every day. A goal is a target that you hope to attain in the future.

For many, the difference is merely semantic, a play on words.

Systems vs Goals Examples

Here are some systems vs goals examples:

• I want to lose 20 pounds is a goal.
  • I eat 100 calories less than normal every day is a system.
• I want to win the racquetball tournament is a goal.
  • I practice my Z serves for 10 minutes every day is a system.
• I want to increase traffic to my blog 200% is a goal
  • I write 500 words every day is a system

Systems vs Goals Scott Adams

According to Scott Adams systems vs goals, goals are for losers:

For most of the days, you are operating in a state of failure (since you have not yet attained the goal). Hence, your mindset is already negative.

Once you reach the goal (if you do), what happens next?

Long-term goals continually hit against the Delay Discounting bias (if it is too far in the future, human psychology discounts the value of the goal)

Building Systems vs Goals

If you adopt a systems mentality then:

You are getting better every day. Each time you apply your systems for success, you are succeeding. You have a positive mindset.

You are systematically acquiring the knowledge and skills to succeed. You are growing.

Your improvements can potentially compound and have a domino effect. Small steps can lead to huge wins.

Goals vs Systems? Use both goals and systems!

A more balanced approach is to view the two frameworks together as symbiotic components of a whole.

Goals set directions, systems provide progress.

Why use goals? Goals give you a macro perspective. Goals provide direction. Goals help you make decisions (life is full of choices). Goals provide the initial motivation and impetus to design and implement systems.

Why use systems? Systems give you a micro perspective – what do I do now, in the present? Systems provide the actions and behavior that take us in the direction of our goals. 

When the initial motivation that comes with goal-setting fades, systems replace motivation with ingrained habits and routines.

Systems deliver measurable progress. Executing systems yield regular success and a positive frame-of-mind.

• I want to lose 20 pounds. I will eat more fiber and protein every day, and cut down on overall calories.
• I want to run a marathon. I will download an app and follow the recommended training every day.

To adopt this mentality, you have to reframe goals to provide directional guidance in the design of effective systems for success. In Atomic Habits, James Clear says:

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

Aligning systems with goals is critical for long-term success. And the better your systems for success, the more significant your progress.

Systems vs Goals: How do we make this actionable?

Our 7 step formula for success is described in How To Succeed In Life? By Building Systems For Success.

In How To Change Your Life For Better? Change Your Identity (in 3 Steps)!, we explored the first step towards lasting change: selecting an identity, a role model. The identity provides vision, beliefs and values. It provides the Why?, the purpose.

From these we derive goals – outcomes that help us realize our values. These are the keys to success in life, the foundation for our blueprint for success:

Identity -> Beliefs, Vision -> Value Goals -> Outcome Goals

• I am a healthy person -> I believe health is important for my well-being -> I value my health -> I want my weight to be less than 145 pounds
• I am a cloud architect -> I believe I design software applications that work well in the cloud -> I value my ability to design -> I want to be a certified Azure Solutions Architect
• I am a blogger -> I believe I provide actionable advice on topics of interest to my readers -> I value my ability to write -> I want to write 50 blog posts this year

August Bradley, in his series on how to build a Notion Life OS, talks about the difference between value goals and outcome goals:

• A value goal is something higher-level, more abstract: I value my health.
• An outcome goal is more targeted, more concrete: I want my weight to be under 145 pounds, I want my BP to be 110/70, I want my total cholesterol to be less than 200.

Systems vs Goals: How to create a system for goals?

Goals, by themselves, as we saw above, are abstract targets. What we need is to act, do things, to achieve our goals. This is where systems come in: what steps or actions will take us towards the goal?

The next step of our 7 step formula for success is to build and implement systems that are aligned with our goal outcomes – systems that we can execute every day to make small, consistent progress towards these outcomes.

In Why Systems Thinking Will Make You Successful In Life?, we explain how systems thinking is critical to enduring success, and in What Will Make You Successful? Building Effective Systems For Success! we describe how to build effective success systems.

Systems vs Goals: Systems for success in life

To succeed in life you need to build success systems, and, often, these systems can be complicated with many habits, routines and workflows.

My system for successfully creating a blog post is a complicated 5 steps (though I have streamlined the process with 7 hacks).

To ensure you perform this system consistently, you need to have a strategy for overcoming procrastination, overcoming limbic friction.

Systems vs Goals: Atomic habits systems vs goals

Habits – the automated, reflexive actions we perform – have been extensive studied. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could build success habits and perform on auto-pilot?

Unfortunately, life is not that easy. Most systems for success in life are too difficult to convert into a habit. They require deliberate, conscious effort. I can never make exercising a habit, exercising requires me to change to my exercise clothes, drive to the gym, get on the exercise machines, shower and return. This is too much to package into a habit!

But, habits are still useful for attaining our goals! The key is to start the system or routine with a habit, and commit to a minimum level of effort or time to the system, obviously starting slow.

For example, to start my blogging workflow system in the morning, I tie it to sipping my morning coffee (temptation bundling), and make the habit that initiates the workflow: the start of a Pomodoro cycle. In Consistent System Execution: A Habit That Will Make You Successful we explore these concepts in detail.

At all times, you should make things easy, otherwise you won’t even start executing your systems for success!