“Goals are best for people that care about winning once. Systems are best for people that care about winning repeatedly. We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.” -James Clear
I used to have difficulty concentrating in school. Completing my homework took longer than necessary because other priorities competed for my attention. I wanted to be outside playing sports, texting a cute classmate, or spending my nights watching television. Often, I would feel tired and apathetic about completing the assignment in front of me.
My early academic life was oriented towards achieving a goal. Getting a good grade meant I succeeded and did not have to work harder. Getting a bad grade meant I failed and I needed to study harder for the next test. The system I had set up was not actually oriented towards learning.
This all changed when I entered my freshman year of college. In my first semester, I underperformed my classmates in every course required for my engineering degree. These courses were designed to test how well you understood and applied core principles. My style of learning was lossy: I would understand what was taught in class, but not the foundations of a subject.
My learning habits required a complete makeover. In my second semester, I resolved to revive my GPA. In the process, I learned how to build a system that helped me actually learn. On the surface, the system was about getting better grades. Under the surface, the system became a space for mastering myself.
The most important changes I made revolved around when, where, and how I learned:
- I focused on the building blocks. My performance broke down when I could not apply a principle. The only way I could learn the principle is if I interrogated its foundation and internalized its building blocks. If I mastered the basics, I could see how they applied in simple to complex examples.
- I set up a system for capturing & testing knowledge. Notebooks became my artistic canvas. I divided my pages into spaces for core concepts, examples, and my open questions. In homework sessions, I could then take individual concepts and test my knowledge of each one. In office hours, I would interrogate my TAs on any concept where I felt confusion.
- I set up focused time blocks. Distractions had always been my achilles heel. Every distraction made it harder for me to focus my energy. The biggest unlock was setting time blocks. These were 2-hour windows where I went to a quiet environment, set out everything I wanted to accomplish, and put out of reach anything that could distract me. In a state of flow, I could connect dots. In a state of distraction, the lossiness continued.
This was my first exposure to building a good system. It gave me an opportunity to experiment with which environments, materials, and people made my system work. It gave me safe spaces to learn, fail, and ask questions before I was being tested. This made the tests more of a milestone than an anxiety-inducing-event. By the time I sat down to be examined, I had already completed my own self-examination.
By the end of my freshman year, I not only improved my grades but developed an entirely new process for learning. This new process brought me something more rewarding than the grade (my original goal): it taught me that the process of learning was a pathway to unlocking new capabilities. And if I set up the right system, I could build new capabilities across my life.
I am now trying to build systems that last me the next 20 years. You could say I am currently in my sophomore year as an entrepreneur. The biggest challenge has been building systems that create leverage per unit of time input, both in my professional and personal life. The goal is now to build systems that can compound over the remainder of my lifetime. And get more durable as a re-activate and re-use them.
