“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results. Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.” - James Clear
While we were doing our college graduation, the ultimate goal for most of us will be to secure a good job. We would spend hours every day learning every concept and successfully land a great job. But do we ever think about continue learning to improve our skills after the job?
Goals are objectives we wish to achieve sometime in the future. But after we achieved, we might forget the purpose of the goal. If we aim for long term success, we should reframe our goals and focus on the systems to reach that. A commitment to a system will make the difference in the long run because systems give you the freedom to do your best work every day without making the same mistakes over and over again. If your current system of work doesn’t work or give the desired results you expect, make a change, create a new system and take steps every day to stick to it.
If you're working towards a goal, reframe it to system first
Before I started to write each day to post a daily blog, I felt doubtful about my writing competency skills. I used to read tons of blogs, get inspired, and tell myself to write a blog by the weekend. When I did write and publish a blog the first time, I expect it would bring lots of people to the blog. And as expected, it didn't happen. When I set a goal to publish an article, my instant gratification brain would expect a positive outcome immediately. If it didn't happen, it would get disappointed and never start it back.
For the past few days, I have been writing blogs daily without expecting any immediate outcomes too. Now I can sense the improvement in my competency skills. Having the system helped me to focus on researching content, taking notes, and structuring the content. Like James Clear says in his book, "If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week".
Choose a system that will take you past the goals.
Action points
- Having a journal recording your daily activities, opens up room for optimization.
- List down the skills required to reach the goal.
- Build a habit to work on those goals. Like if you want to write a book - read & write daily. If you want to build products - build solutions that helps you, may be an automation.
- If you are taking #100daysofcode challenge, think of it as a system for consistent learning to make this a routine beyond 100 days.
Thought for the day
This article is written by Karthikeyan and co-authored by Rams
This article was written as part of day 10 of the #14daysbreakloop challenge. Get the new tab extension from Chrome Web Store and start working on your #100daysofcode