Setting Goals isn't Enough; Systems Will Help You Achieve Them
The core systems I rely on to remain productive
"Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny." - Aristotle
How can you ensure you always win every time?
By building systems that take you there. This is the short answer.
I like this quote from James Clear:
Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there.
The encouragement is that we spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results.
In today’s post, I share the exact apps and tools I rely on that help me build productivity habits such as:
Organization—knowing what exactly I need to focus on.
Time management—knowing exactly how my time is being used.
Brainstorming—putting my ideas together to develop a solution.
#1 Time management
There are new tools for time management emerging every day. However, for me, Rize takes the crown.
Imagine you had an app that observed how you worked all in the background and gave you a detailed report at the end of the day.
It told you:
How many hours you spent in meetings.
When you took a break.
How much time was spent in deep focus.
All it needed you to do was show up and use your laptop or desktop. Sort of “carry on with your daily tasks, and I will tell you what your weakness is.”
As I have been writing today’s newsletter, Rize quietly tracked my task as writing.
This is an in-depth view of a day tracked using Rize.
This is the system you need to:
Improve your focus.
Automatically track your work, and
Move faster.
Get started here.
Learn more about Rize here.
#2 Organization
"Organizing is what you do before you do something so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up." - A.A. Milne
To be highly productive, you need to know what you are doing with your time, what is of high priority, and what can wait.
ClickUp is my go-to tool for this.
Let’s take a scenario where I work 9-5 and have also started writing online as a side hustle. Courses such as this can help you earn $1000 monthly by simply writing on Medium.
In ClickUp, I set my spaces into my work, learning, and writing medium articles.
The beauty of ClickUp is that you can group tasks based on status, assigned members, and priority.
Report development is of high priority in my 9-5 job.
In my learning space, I set to finish only 1 tutorial per day.
When I proceed to writing Medium articles, I do it right inside the app.
ClickUp also gives you access to a whiteboard to organize your ideas. You can access templates to organize your thoughts.
You get to setup a dashboard that gives you a summary of all tasks you are working on.
Get started with ClickUp. Dive in to learn more here.
#3 Brainstorming
"The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas." - Linus Pauling
As I work on new medium articles or complete tasks in my 9-5 daily job, I need a tool that can help me capture all ideas and select the best I need to work on.
Fabric is the tool that does this for me.
I simply drop my files with numerous ideas and it does the rest for me.
Example, I get documents from different meetings.
The tool helps me get points for me and I can brainstorm on what to do with these points.
Get started with Fabric here.
Each day, I rely on these systems to:
Manage my time.
Get organized.
Brainstorm on different kinds of projects besides work.
I am sure to achieve my goals because I have the systems that carry me there.
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There’s always a lot more than weekly posts.
Get Things Done
This ebook is for you if you already know how to set goals and work towards them.
I introduce frameworks and apps other than conventional to-do lists you can start using to achieve more out of your work life.
The Anti-Productivity Manifesto
You have mastered productivity but are also interested in questioning what you know.
This ebook is for you if you are interested in learning more about debunking productivity myths.
I talk about how I experimented with ideas on managing energy and not time and how I succeeded.
That's it for now.
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Catch you again soon.
Have a great day :)
Great post.
Another relevant quote from James Clear here: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
I appreciate this post. As a neurodivergent person I rely heavily on systems to get things done. No amount of SMART goal setting helps. Right now my favorite system is in Notion that I co-created with Claude.