(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Proactivity Show. Podcasts where we believe that people like you can get the important things done without sacrificing your health, family, and things that matter to you. If it's your first time listening, welcome to the show. I'm Tam founder of Asian Efficiency where we help people become more productive at work and in life. And I do this podcast to get it with my co-host Brooks Duncan. How are you today, Brooks? - I'm good, but this is the world we live in now. - Yesterday, so we always talk about the Logitech MX Master mice that both of us really like. I have mine totally tricked out with all these sorts of controls. Well, Logitech, all of a sudden had this massive system failure and turns out that all of these features we all rely on the software being able to connect to their servers. So everybody who uses a Logitech MX Master mouse with customizations at all died. So I was thinking to myself, how did I get myself in this situation? Where I need my mouse to be connected to the internet. But this is the world we live in. Turns out a developer forgot to renew a certificate is what happened, but anyway, this is the world we live in now. Even our mice are connected to the internet. - That's so funny. We had a similar issue a while ago for people who don't know. So we record this and we use a particular software called Descript to kind of edit the show. And for whatever reason a few weeks ago, somebody forgot to renew some sort of domain name. And so we couldn't log in to record the episode because it's all done online. And yeah, just make sure, treat and value, everything that would go a little bit more after you run into an incident when you realize, like, hey, we realized so much on this stuff to get things done and moving forward. Like if AWS goes out, we just go, oh my gosh, half the internet is done. Like there's nothing going on. Global productivity is taking a dip, right? ChatgbD is down for two hours and everyone's screaming on X and the world is coming to an end. So it's the world that we live in today. And there's a lot of interconnected systems. And funny enough, today's topic is all about systems. We're going to be talking about thinking in systems and how you can approach your productivity, how you get stuff done, your life in terms of systems thinking. So we're going to talk about like goal setting and how you can reframe it in turn, turn that into systems. So we're going to talk about different ways you can implement different systems and how we think about also system building. And before we start diving in, we always like to share our top three favorite resources. So what bricks, what are they today? All right, well, you said the magic words there a minute ago. So I figure for our first resource, got a reference book that both of us have read and both really enjoyed. It's called Thinking in Systems by Danela Meadows. And so this is a great book exactly about this topic. So if you're interested in this topic and you haven't read the book yet, definitely check that out as number one. Number two is a related book. It's called The Goal by Eli Goldrat. I know also we both read this. It is in that fable style that both you and I respond to where it's kind of told in a story and scenario base. The main lesson for this is that every, well, first of all, everything is a system. But number two, every system has a constraint. And no matter what you do, if you don't address that constraint, the other stuff you do isn't gonna make as much of a difference. That's number two. And number three is also a book. It's called The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. So this is an audio book I'm just finishing up. It's a little bit of a controversial recommendation because I remember when it came out a few years ago, there was some accusations that she had plagiarized the topic from a poem called Let Them. So just to be safe, I'm gonna link to that poem as well. But it's a very interesting book, especially if you like Mel Robbins style, which I've never read a book by her, but I've done the audiobooks and I just like her general style. So it's definitely an entertaining book, but just to be safe, I will link to that poem as well. That's the top three resources you can learn more by clicking any of the links in the show notes. So in your podcast player, just swipe and click on that link. Yep, and if you ever want to get in touch with us, feel free to email us at
[email protected] whether it's a sponsorship opportunity or you want to submit a topic suggestion and we always love hearing from everybody and feel free to reach out to us anytime. And let's talk about systems stuff here. So we wanted to talk about this topic today because I think it's an underrated topic. I was actually just on vacation with a friend of mine and he's a big systems guy. And we talked about systems thinking and he was explaining to me how he essentially developed language or among systems that doesn't really exist yet. So if you think about classic systems thinking, you think about an input, you think about components, you think about a process, you think about outputs, but there's lots of other ways to kind of describe a system and there's a really interesting conversation. And I thought describing this and talking about it with you here, Brooks, as a system guy yourself, would be an interesting topic for everybody, especially now that we're still in the early parts of the new year. A lot of us have set maybe a bunch of goals or we have a new years of resolution or we're thinking about ways to be more productive this year. And the classic thing for everyone to do is always to set a goal, right? It's to say, hey, I'm gonna lose X amount of pounds or I'm gonna get in shape or I'm gonna make X amount of money this year or I'm gonna get promoted. Like we said, all these like goals or outcomes that we're looking to achieve. And that's one way to kind of go about it. And something that my friend said, which I thought was very interesting is when you said goals or you're trying to determine outcomes, you kind of what he calls it pre-success failure, you're kind of in this mode of until you hit that thing, you are still in failure mode. Even if you're making progress, which is great 'cause you can see momentum, there's this black and white state of you've either accomplished it or you haven't. And the way he describes systems thinking is when you have a destination that you wanna get to. And I liked how he said the word destination, not a goal or an outcome, like it's a direction. You're going towards and you can do something every day or every other day or every week. Like you have this really short feedback loop where you can kind of know if you're on the right path and if you're having successes or wins early on to also keep going because, for example, if you say that your goal is to read 50 books this year. By the time it's, I don't know, November, December, you're either going to hit it or you're not. However, if you convert that into a systems approach which I know something that you like to do Brooks is reading 20 pages a day, that is something that you can do every day and you can kind of get that feedback loop very quickly to go, hey, did I do that? Yes or no? Did you read for 20 minutes? Yes, great. You're making progress and that's all that matters. And then the goal or the destination or where you want to end up is going to be inevitable that you're going to get there. But you don't have to wait for a really long period of time or delay gratification because you're doing the right thing, quote unquote, the system every single day that allows you to get there. And I thought that was a really interesting approach of way of thinking because you and I both have talked about goal setting and systems approach to it as well. But I thought the feedback loop of, hey, you can do something every day to be successful. I thought that was an interesting reframe. Yeah, it's interesting too because if you're purely goal focused where you're trying to like hit, like you said, some black and white scenario, a lot of times you can do like very unsustainable things to get to that goal. And once you reach it or don't reach it, then guess what? You don't have the scaffolding to continue to pass that point. Like I think of not to sell my own sign out of the bus, but he had this goal last year that he wanted to have a certain amount of money saved in his investment accounts. Now, first of all, that's a terrible goal because that completely depends on the market. So the market going up and down. So first of all, I tried to tell him his goal was in grade because it's not dependent on him. So leaving that aside. But second of all, he was like putting all his money into his savings, trying to reach this goal, which he actually did reach to his credit. But guess what? He had no money left to do anything else once that period passed because what he was doing while he reached his goal was unsustainable. And I've tried to tell him like a better thing to do would be figure out what works for you to have like regular savings, like save X percent, a paycheck or X percent of everything you make. Just focus on that. And then as you kind of like go with your career, you're like you said, you're inevitably going to go up and up and up and up and up. But trying to do unsustainable thing to hit some arbitrary goal, like you always hear about people who want to read a certain number of books per year. And I see this on social media all the time. People like really like trying to be like racing to reach this goal. And I think a better thing to do, like you said, is just have a regular scaffolding system that you have to get the benefits without necessarily this black and white situation. Yeah, I think another way to think about this is if you can figure out the direction you're going to and where you want to end up, then the systems are a way to make progress to get there. And so like if you use your example of your son, like he probably wants to save X amount of money and like have a certain amount of, you know, like a certain number in the accounts. But then there's a hundred million ways you could potentially do that, right? And that can be paralyzing in itself. However, if you really boil down and go, hey, if the direction is that you want to see this number grow over time, then all you have to do is, for example, set aside 10% of every time you make any form of income or that money comes your way, then that number is inevitably going to grow. And then also if you have compounding interests playing in your favor, that's even better, right? And that's one of the reasons one of my favorite books is it's called The Richest Man in Babylon. And you don't have to read the book even though it's a very short book. But the basic premise of the book is that if you just save 10% of every time you receive money, you'll be very well off and you'll become The Richest Man in Babylon according to the book. And so that's a systems approach to saving and growing money in that sense. Just like when we think about, for example, weight loss, the goal could be, hey, I want to lose X amount of pounds or kilos. But the system is actually, are you, for example, working out multiple times a week? Or are you hitting a number of step counts every single day? Or is it like a number of calories that you consume every single day? Like these are kind of like the systems that allow you to get eventually to the destination. So I've been, especially in the last few years, I've been thinking more about what is the direction that I want to go towards? And what is the day-to-day system that I can execute to get there? And I was listening to a podcast. I think his name is Daniel Presley. He's like a British guy. He talks about business about a lot of different things. And he was talking about how, if you want to grow your revenue, there's a lot of things you can do. And he talks about the word he uses is promotion. And what he said was, hey, if you want to have revenue growth, you have to have a plan every single week that you can execute. If you can execute a plan every single week, which is going to be a form of a promotion somehow, then it's going to inevitable that you're going to be growing your revenue. And I thought that was an interesting way of putting it, because you can make revenue growth as complex as you want it to be, but he just boiled it down to do something every single week that allows it to grow. And you can actually apply that same idea to almost anything else that you want to do in life. Yeah, like the let them theory book that I referenced earlier. It's not particularly about systems, but she does talk about that, because she's a public speaker, quite well known. And she was saying she was having a real challenge being successful at the beginning, trying to figure out how to become a speaker, essentially. And she talked to this kind of like mentor person, and the mentor told her, hey, there's like-- it's a very known systematic way to become a speaker. And there's like three things you need to do, and just do them consistently. And you'll get no return at the beginning. But if you're just-- if you're doing this systematic three things over and over again, eventually, you're going to start going through that growth that you were talking about, but trying to like wing it and trying this in that and going for home runs right away. It's just not going to be-- for some people, it is successful, right? There's always outliers. Somebody who doesn't follow any sort of systematic thing and get the success that they want. But that is very unusual. Usually, it's the people who are consistent and systematic that get there. So let's talk about how to actually build systems then, because I think there can be as technical as you want it to be, or as simplified as we could make it. So if I think about systems, I think about one is-- what is something that you can do every single day and execute? Because that in a way is a system, right? So that could be a process. That could be a step-by-step thing that you do every single day. A habit in a way is a system, or just like a process is a system. They're all kind of related and different, but under the same umbrella. And the hardest thing I find is you can make so many different systems. But the hardest thing is actually figuring out what the direction is that we want to go towards. Because that actually, oftentimes, goes down downstream to determine what systems we have to build, right? You don't want to build systems for the sake of building systems. I kind of got lost in my own shuffle when in the past 12 months, I've been trying to build more AI agents and learning the craft of prompting and building agents and agents are essentially systems. However, they have a little bit more autonomy and capacity to do stuff, which can be very powerful. But what I found to realize after developing 40 or 50 agents or so, that yes, that was good for learning. And if I did it for just for the sake of learning, which is what I did, it's great. But if I had a form of direction to it to say, hey, I'm going to focus on making, for example, Asian efficiency completely AI forward, meaning I'm going to turn every IP that we've developed of AE to be more like AI forward or AI native. And that was my sort of direction. I would have built so many other systems compared to what I just built over the last year or so, just because I didn't have a direction. I was just kind of like doing it for the sake of doing it. And I feel like so much of life can be that where we're just trying to randomly do stuff for the sake of doing it, because it feels productive, because it's the right thing. We heard on the podcast or we see it on YouTube video. And we go, yeah, that sounds good. We should be doing that when they actually lack the direction that we need to go into first, because it's a downstream effect. I mean, it's so interesting, like, how long on the productivity show and the AE blog have you talked about shiny objects in them? And, you know, often it's in the context of apps. But it applies just as well to things that you can automate or systematize or that type of thing. One of the things in that systems, that thinking in systems book, they talked about earlier, is this idea of leverage points. I think that can be a good road map to figuring out what is worth systemizing, which is like, what is it that you can change? What is it that you can put a system in? What is it, what is the like before and after state that you can apply that will have the big result? And I think just systemizing everything because it's there, like you said, it depends on the goal. If you're learning stuff, then that's a whole different thing. If you're trying to, like, I think of the AE team retreat we did in the Philippines where we had everybody like install Alfred and learn all these automations. The point of that, yeah, was to be more productive for sure. But the second part of the point of it, it was to get everybody thinking in this idea of automation and I think same thing with systems. If you're wanting to learn how to have that system mindset, then sure, like, systemize all the things. But if you want to actually have, if you want to actually have an impact, it's better to look at where are those leverage points that we can make changes and actually get a huge benefit from. You know how you finish a meeting? And there's just so much admin work. You need to figure out the action items, figure out who will do the action items, turn it all into resources, come up with some way to track it, and then sort out follow ups. And that's just a normal meeting, not even a crazy one. Well, notion agent can do it all for me. It reads through meeting notes, adds action items to the right pages in notion, and even tags teammates automatically. It's like having a project manager that just keeps everything on track in the background while I keep my eye on the bigger picture. Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one connected space that just works. It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and it's actually fun to use. With AI built right in, you spend less time switching between tools and more time creating great work. And now with notion agent, your AI doesn't just help with work, it finishes it. With a single prompt, notion agent forms a plan, executes it, and will even reassess and try again if it hits a snag. Completing multi-step tasks like creating new pages or databases from scratch, or just editing them, or summarizing entire projects in minutes. You assign the tasks, and your agent does the work. A notion agent even has enhanced database querying capabilities to find patterns and insights that I would never find on my own, and it doesn't in just seconds. So try Notion, now with Notion agent at Notion.com/TPS. That's all lowercase letters, Notion.com/TPS, to try your new AI teammate Notion agent today. And when you use our link, you're supporting the show. Notion.com/TPS. Everyone talks about their new routines in January, but mine is actually sticking. I treat hydration like a daily ritual now. It's right up there with exercise and sleep. Drip drop has become the thing that makes everything else work better. My energy, my skin, and just my general vibe. Thanks to drip drop for supporting our show, go to dripdrop.com and use promo code TPS for 20% off your first order. Drip drop is doctor-developed, proven fast hydration that helps your body and mind work better. It uses a precise ratio of electrolytes and glucose for rapid absorption, delivering three times the electrolytes and half the sugar of leading sports strength. So you feel results fast, more focus, better energy, improved mood, even glowing skin. Drip drop science back formula is trusted by firefighters, medical professionals, and over 90% of top college and pro teams because it's engineered to rehydrate you faster and more effectively than water alone. And to make it easy, drip drop has flexible subscription options, so you're never stuck with a proven fast hydration. Whether you're on the job, at the gym, or parenting, you'll always have your drip on hand. And it actually tastes amazing. There's 16 original flavors and eight zero sugar options, and it fits seamlessly into my routine. Morning, post workout, or even mid-day slump. This morning, I had the zero sugar citrus flavor, and it was great. I like the fact that it's zero sugars. I don't need to worry about it messing up my goals. And the packets are so small in light, I can have one with me all the time. Right now, drip drop is offering podcasts listeners 20% off your first order. Go to dripdrop.com and use promo code TPS. That's dripdrop.com promo code TPS for 20% off. Stock up now at dripdrop.com and use promo code TPS. I think a really important key to not to just identify leverage points is actually, how do we increase the clock speed or the internal speed of what we do? And what I mean with that is, if I do a process, like if I build a habit and the reward comes at the very end, and it's very delayed, it's so easy for us to give up on something, right? Versus if the reward is almost instant, we are a little bit more inclined and motivated to keep going. And that's why one of the superpowers that we can all develop as humans is to be able to delay gratification as long as possible, to be able to get what we want in life. And that's, you know, we've talked about the marshmallow test. Everyone knows about that, right? Where the little kids are being tested if they can withhold, you know, eating a marshmallow versus, you know, actually eating it on the spot and turns out people who have a little bit more restraints and can withhold from eating the marshmallow on the spot tend to do a little bit more, let's just call it do better in life than those who don't. And this is the idea of like delaying gratification. However, one way we can kind of gamify this I think is by shortening the feedback loop. So even though I might not get the reward instantly, if I can get feedback loops that I'm doing very well and it's consistently being, you know, fed back to me, a perfect example of this is, okay, I'm building all these AI agents and like freeing up time, which is great. But the fact that every week I can get a report that shows how many tasks all my agents did and how much time it saved me is a short feedback loop to go, hey, whatever I'm doing right now is working so that whenever I get super busy or things are going to get really crazy, I know I have all these systems going on to allow me to keep going. And so if I waited until that critical moment when I'm super busy and then that season of life might take two or three months and then I look back later on and go, oh my gosh, I'm so glad I built those systems like six months ago because they're allowing to get through the last three or four months. I mean, it's a very gratifying feeling. But the fact that I knew every week that these systems are working and it's doing its job and I'm seeing the results on the day-to-day basis gave me a lot of confidence and excitement to then keep going as well. So I think the trick that we can all take away from this is the shorter we can make that feedback loop to allow us to see progress, to allow us to see whatever we're doing is working is infinitely better to allow us to be more consistent. The delaying gratification thing is interesting because it's almost like a good approach is to look for things that we can be grateful for that aren't the end goal. Like for example, let's say your goal is to just using the example from before. Let's say the goal is to have $50,000 in your account or whatever number you want. Like you said, you're always failing until you hit that $50,000 but maybe the idea is just to be like get the happiness, get the gratification from seeing the balance grow every month or every week or whatever your cycle, that every paycheck, whatever your cycle is. So it's just reframing what is success for you. But the other thing that I was thinking about when you were talking about feedback loops is I mentioned on a recent episode, the book Black Box Thinking, which is another excellent book. And that is actually a topic for a lot of the book, is this idea of feedback loops. And a through line through the book is this difference between the airline industry and the healthcare industry where the airline industry, you know, say what you like about flying. You know, some people don't have great experience if the airports are whatever, which is all fair. However, you can't deny that it's for the amount of planes that are in the air at any one time, you can't deny how insanely safe it is. And that's because the feedback loops are very tight, very paid attention to and are constantly taking lessons and learning and improving whereas healthcare like open up the newspaper any given day and there's like a surgery that's gone wrong. There's somebody getting some infection, somebody's doing something. And it's the systems are there. Like anyone who's ever been to a doctor's office in hospitals, there's like systems all over the place. However, what the author was saying is that the feedback loops aren't being put into place so that the systems aren't really improving. If anything, you're avoiding feedback because you're avoiding this idea of owning a mistake and maybe getting sued or whatever. So it's almost like an anti-feedback loop. So the reason I bring that up is because we're not all necessarily pilots or doctors or anything like that. But the idea is that if we can have those tight feedback loops like you're talking about and actually put them in the practice, then our systems are going to be so much more effective as we go forward versus just like doing the same thing over and over again and thinking to yourself, "Oh, I have a system," right? I made my SOP, I go through the same thing everywhere again, but it's applying those feedback loops. Yeah, and I think the shorter they are, the better. And that's why I think the weekly review is so powerful because you have a feedback loop every single week to keep you accountable, but also to show you, "Hey, you're on the right track, keep going," or "Hey, there's a bunch of things that maybe aren't going so well. Maybe it's time to make some adjustments." And without that feedback loop, you're not going to know if you're on the right track. You might be flying blind and going, "Hey, I'm hoping I'm praying that I'm going to end up at the destination that I'm trying to get to." Or you can have that feedback loop and go, "Hey, here's where you are. Here's where you were last week. If you keep going, you're probably going to end up at this position. Is that where you want to be? If yes, great. Keep doing what you're doing. If not, let's make some adjustments for the next seven days and see where you end up then. And that feedback loop is so key. That's why the whole thing, whether it's GTD or any sort of productivity system you might be using. That feedback loop is so key to make sure that your system, whatever you're doing on a weekly basis, is working. And so the shorter we can make that, whether it is daily or weekly, or almost like instance, depending on whatever system you're trying to build, I think the better. And the tricky part is just, how do we design that? This is different from a reward. A reward is typically something you want to have as soon as possible because it gives you good feelings, dopamine, you're excited. That's a different than a feedback loop. A feedback loop is where you're getting information intel if you may well to go, hey, what you're doing is working. Great. Keep going. Or you got to make some adjustments. And so when I think about systems, I'm always thinking about, okay, yes, we have things we got to do, processes, outputs and everything. If you're doing it really technical. But the overarching thing that I'm always looking for is what's the feedback loop that allows us to figure out if we're doing the right thing, and then also how do we make it shorter? And if you think about that and apply that to habits or things you do on your computer, or whenever you wake up to when you go to bed, like you can apply this to so many different things, so you start to realize like, oh, there's some things that don't have the feedback loop, right? Or some things that are actually feedback loops that you never thought about. So for example, a feedback loop is, if you go to bed really late, and how you feel the next morning is a feedback loop, it allows you to know right away, like, hey, did I get enough sleep? Did I go to bed on time? If not, this is the result I'm feeling. And that's instantly feedback to go, hey, you know, am I on the right path? Or do I have to make some adjustments whether it's today or tonight and to on, right? The classic way we've talked about putting feedback loops into practice on the show and on the blog and the passes, like, you know, those three, those three questions, right? What's going well? What's not going well? What can I do better next time? That type of thing. I think that can make for a very effective feedback loop. Do you have any other ways that you like to do it? Or do you just stick with the kind of like, the three classic questions? I took a very nerdy approach in the last year and a half. I actually build a custom GPT in chat GPT that has, I want to say about 15 questions to 15 to 20 questions. So it takes me about 20 minutes to get through. And I basically put it on audio mode or voice mode and it will just like wake up and then walk me through the weekly review every single week. So like a question is, for example, what was the headline this past week? That's a question that allows me to kind of zoom out and think about like, how would I summarize it in one week, right? And then we'll go through like, what went well? What didn't go so well? What were some blockers you had? What would make next week a 10 out of 10? What's getting you excited? What is something that you're avoiding? That you really know you should be doing? What is something on your calendar that you can remove so that you can free up some more time for other things? Like these are all very tactical questions. And I kind of like created the checklists and that's something I've been using for many years. I've kind of shared those in newsletters as well what my checklist was. And I basically converted that into a custom GPT so that whenever I turn it on the voice mode, it will just ask me those questions. And I just verbally answered them. And then once it's done, I'll go to the actual chat on the browser. And then I'll say something like, "Hey, give me a very detailed summary." And then I'll print out a very detailed summary. And then I give it to an AI agent. And I say, "Here's what it is." It will then store it in a Google Drive folder. And then all of my other agents that are kind of like working will actually reference that weekly review. So they know what the goal is for the upcoming week what I'm planning for. And then also, like I have an agent that shows me my schedule every single day. And what I need to know. But before it shows me my schedule, it will actually read the weekly review as well to say like, "Hey, you set you wanted to focus on recording three podcast episodes." Well, today on your schedule, you have zero. And it seems like tomorrow, you have zero as well. So I noticed that between three and four, you have an empty window. So maybe consider recording. And I was like, "Holy crap." This is insane. So it's like, I'm building all this stuff that I didn't even know you could do. Which has just been really fun. But just that feedback loop is so tight now. And the faster I can make that reappear over and over and over again, the more focused I'm productive I can be. That's just an example of how I tighten in the feedback loop. Because I just want to know like, "Hey, I kind of rely so much on my own memory of what I'm trying to do. Why don't I have an agent reminding me every day, midweek, every Friday, every Monday, you know?" And so on. So what you're saying is, "Yes, you have gone beyond those three questions." Absolutely. If anybody ever wants this custom GVT, maybe I'll do a live webinar. We can kind of walk through that. So Brooks, we talk about systems so far. What do you think is the key to making systems consistent? Because it's one thing to design a system. It's another thing to actually make it consistent. So what are some pillars or ideas that you have around consistency? Like we said, I think it's not about just, I think a lot of times we think of systems as having things we do and showing up to do them. And that is definitely like half the battle is if you don't show up to do it, then it's going to be successful. But I think the key with consistency is to use all of your tools, all your productivity tools that we've talked about before and work your system into those. Like it's kind of like you said, your AI agent will look at what works for you as your AI agent will look and say, "Hey, this is what I think you should be doing." So if you want to get advanced, you can have a system, not you. But even still, like using the, if you don't want to go to the AI route, using the kind of like the productivity classics, making sure that you always have something on your to-do list and/or your calendar that is taking a step with that system. So that you use your example of your wanting to do podcasts. Well, if you don't have an AI agent doing it for you, making sure that you've got time blocked away for a podcast episode for or a task on your task manager for that podcast episode. So the first step aside just showing up is to have your productivity tools that you're already using, making sure that your systems are reflected on that. And it's not just kind of like more aspirational, but you're actually putting stuff in there. How about you? What are you? What sorts of things do you do for your consistency, other than having your AI agent or do you around? I think, well, starting small and simple, I think is always the way to go. So any time you're trying to introduce a new system in your life, what's the easiest and smallest version that you can design to do consistently? Because trying to tackle something very complex from day one, I think leads to a lot of. I don't know if anxiety is the right word, but quite a bit of resistance typically comes up, including myself, whereas, for example, if I set to myself, hey, if I want to get into running, the easiest thing I can do every day is just, as soon as I wake up, it's where I'm running close. It's the simplest thing that I can do, right? If I wanted to learn how to code, the easiest thing I can do every single day is to fire up a coding agent every day and just spend 10 minutes on it. That's the easiest thing I can do. So, whenever I'm trying to introduce something new to my life, the simpler it is, the better. And then, as we always like to say, one tweak a week is all it takes to make massive productivity gains over time is, how do we then apply the idea of how can I make one improvement every single week to make this even better and more consistent and even more effective, right? So, if I'm trying to run every single day for, I don't know, 10 minutes or whatever, or go for a walk, I have this goal right now of walking 9,500 steps a day. And, you know, everyone has heard about the 10k steps, but to me, 10k was like, oh my gosh, as somebody who walks 5,500 steps on average, 10k sounds so much, it's like double, right? So, I kind of said an imperfect goal for myself, I said, hey, I'm going to try to aim for 9,500, not even the magical 5-digit number, the 10k, I'm just going to be for 9,500. But I actually started off by just increasing my stepcone to 6,000, because my average was 5,500, which was very low. And I said, okay, let's just work my way up to 6,000, let's try to do that for a few days consistently. And guess what, even trying to get to 6,000 meant that I had to think about it, I had to think about, okay, instead of taking an elevator, why don't I just take the stairs today, right? And so, I'm trying to introduce all these like little changes in my life, even though it was an incremental gain of 500 steps, like I could do 500 steps just walking around my home if I was really focused on it, right? But because now I made a thing and I was think about it every single day, I started introducing all these little changes and then 6,000 a day became easy and then 6,500 became easy and then, you know, added an extra 500,000 steps a day, became a lot easier because now I had this momentum in my favor to then go, okay, I can take the steps, I've done that before, right? Every time I finish a meal, I can go for a walk. That's a new habit now. But it all started with like doing the little thing consistently first. Yeah, and that's one thing to keep in mind about systems as well, is that they can kind of have an expiration date and the danger with systems is that you can put a system into place, it's going well, everything's great, but then it becomes a habit and not in a good way. You're just going through the motions of doing the tasks in that system and you might be doing things that might not serve you anymore or you're just doing them because you've always done those. That's something to watch for as well. Don't forget to review your system from time to time to make sure it doesn't just become you going through the motions. Yeah, and that's actually a great way to conclude this episode here today. So if you're making it all the way to this point, you probably have some ideas of systems you want to add to your life or systems you want to improve or things you want to do better. So what's this simplest version that you can build or if you already have something going on, like what's one marginal tweak that you can make to make it a little bit better, more effective, or if you already are performing at a very high level, what are some marginal tweaks you can add in multiple areas of your life that make it better as well. And I think if you start looking for opportunities now that you've heard this, you'll start to see there's actually a lot of things you could be doing. And those little tweaks will introduce major changes over time when done consistently. And so I want to encourage you to think about like what are some tweaks and marginal gains that you can make over the next seven days in your life and go do that consistently. And I think you're going to see some great results from do that. All right, that is it for today's episode. Really appreciate you listening to the productivity show. Subscribe if you haven't yet. Leave us a review on Apple podcasts and Spotify. It helps those grow to show and we look forward to seeing you again next week.