Create your Unique System

Achieve goals in time!

Hello You,

How many times have you promised yourself you'd start exercising, only to find yourself putting it off time and time again?

Or maybe you committed to doing something every day, only to give up after just a few days? Remember your new year resolution?

The thing is, relying solely on willpower will not make you consistent enough to achieve your goals.

More than we like to admit, our emotions or feelings call the shots.

You might want to exercise daily, but if you're not feeling it, chances are you won't follow through. So, the key is to get your emotions on board on your goal-oriented activities.

Easier said than done, I know, but there are ways to trick your emotions into helping you do what you need to do.

Remember in the last letter, I mentioned how my Muslim roommates in university excelled academically by creating a system around their faith-based rituals?

Well, today, I will walk you through how to create an effective system around your daily habits to achieve your goals.

Believe it or not, we all have daily habits, whether it's scrolling through TikTok, biting our nails, eating, bathing or getting ready for work. The trick is to identify these habits and weave your goal-oriented activities around them.

Here's an example from 2021: I knew I needed to drink more water, but for years, I struggled to make it a habit. I was always dehydrated and was advised to drink 4-5 litres of water daily. I tried but I couldn’t keep up, I was taking about 1 litre a day till I read a book called Atomic Habits and learned about creating systems.

I needed to solve my dehydration problem. So what did I do?

I created a system.

Every night before going to bed, I placed a bottle of water beside my bed so I could drink it in the morning. As soon as I woke up( something I always do), I took a bottle of water. And, in about 40 minutes, I would have to pee, right?

The system or hack I used was designed such that anytime I visited the toilet, I had to take a bottle of water. Best believe, in about 2 months, drinking water had become a habit, and now my day feels off if I don't start with a bottle in the morning.

The system worked, but I battled with my feelings in the first few days. I didn’t feel like taking that much water in the morning. Soon enough, my emotions got on board and it became a habit.

Now let’s talk about you.

How to Create a System to Achieve your Goals

The first thing you want to do is break down your goals into specific activities/tasks that when done consistently will yield the desired result. Now, identify what activities you do everyday (daily habits)  that you can weave these goal-oriented activities around. Then find out how to make doing the activities easy by structuring your environment to serve you, and removing distractions. 

For example:

Say you want to write daily (new activity) after brushing your teeth (an existing daily habit), you need to set up your workstation the night before (making the decision easy in the morning), also put your phone away from you or disconnect from WIFI before bed(removing distractions).

Does that make sense?

Exactly! Remember, you cannot “will” your way into building new habits, you need to set up systems to sustain you through the process.

Now, you know how to build a system, right?

I will leave you with this quote by James Clear, author of the best-selling book Atomic Habits. 

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

Please share with a friend.

Until next time,

Tobby Rhodes