Success Is Hard Until You Build Systems Like This

This video is all about how you can achieve more success in your personal

or professional life by building systems.

So, we're going to talk about the philosophy of this, why systems are important,

and what the difference is between people who have systems and people who don't.

And in the second part of the video,

I'm going to go through five systems

that I think you should totally incorporate into your life

if you haven't already,

because they will drastically,

drastically increase your chances of achieving whatever your own personal definition of success actually

is.

And if you're new here, hello, my name is Ali,

I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur

and author of the New York Times bestseller Feel Good Productivity,

and this channel is all about the books

and ideas and strategies

and tools that can help us achieve financial freedom,

live life on our own terms, and ultimately build a life that we love.

So, if that sounds good, you might like to hit the subscribe button,

but now let's dive into the video.

All right, so let's start out with a definition.

So, we are all trying to work towards this thing that we call success,

but what the hell does success actually mean?

There are lots of different definitions,

people have their own like ways of defining this, but in my opinion,

you would generally consider yourself successful

if you've achieved or

if you're actively working towards goals

that you intrinsically care about.

I would say your life is kind of successful

if you're working towards those goals in a balanced way.

So, for example, I wouldn't call it massive success if, you know,

you're single-mindedly focused on just this one thing,

but then you've like wrecked your health

and your relationships and your life along the way.

I wouldn't personally think of that as being success.

And finally, success is where you are actually enjoying the journey along the way,

because ultimately, you could have success, you could have the nicest house,

you could have the fanciest job, you could have the biggest business,

but if you haven't enjoyed the journey of getting there,

it will very much feel hollow,

because you'll get to

that destination and you'll realize

that that is not where happiness

and salvation is actually to be found.

Now, in order to achieve our goals,

we basically need to take a series of actions.

If we take the right sort of actions

and do them for long enough

and consistently enough,

we are more likely to get to our goals.

In order to have a generally balanced life,

we kind of need a somewhat reasonable diversity of goals

and a therefore diversity of actions across the different domains of our life.

For example, our professional and personal life, our work, our health, our relationships,

our hobbies.

And in order to have enjoyment along the way, to be honest,

a lot of it comes from our approach to things.

Like if you approach stuff in a sort of playful way,

if you approach things in a sincere rather than serious way,

if you have an attitude and a mindset of non-attachment,

like you're working towards your goals and you're doing stuff to get there,

but you're not overly attached to any particular outcome.

And of course, if you can drive intrinsic motivation for the goals

that you're achieving,

so rather than being motivated by external factors like I don't know,

fame and money and what your society thinks you should do or whatever,

you're actually motivated by intrinsic things, like you actually want to do the thing.

Those are generally the factors that lead to enjoyment.

And I would like to offer for your consideration in this video

that if you build systems into your life,

you're actually far more likely to achieve your goals,

you're more likely to do the actions that are required to achieve your goals,

you're more likely to have a balanced approach to the goals

and the actions that you achieve

and take,

and you're also more likely to have enjoyment along the journey,

all by building the right sorts of system into your life.

So now let's try and define what actually is a system.

And you can define a system

as a network of interconnected things

that lead to a particular result.

And those things could be, for example, actions, or they could be processes,

which are really just like sets of actions, or they could be checklists,

which are again, really just sets of actions.

So what you basically have is

that a system is a step-by-step set of actions

that leads to a particular result.

And again, the whole point of this video is

that I would like to argue

that if you can take the approach of building more systems into your life,

and basically systematizing your approach to your personal and professional life, in my opinion,

you're far more likely to achieve success,

whatever that definition of success is for you.

Now, I want to give you a couple of examples here.

So, imagine the world of aviation, right?

Like pilots piloting airplanes.

That is an enormously high-stakes situation,

and the entire world of aviation is built around systems.

Systems are the most important thing.

There is a system to build the appropriate airplane.

This is why basically all airplanes kind of look the same,

because people have figured out a system for making airplanes fly.

And so if you deviate too much from the system,

you end up not building an airplane that flies.

Let's take another high-stakes thing, like medicine.

I used to be a doctor, in case you didn't know.

And medicine is all about following a system.

Yes, there is some level of like individual stuff that the doctors do.

For example, like, you know, talking to the patient and making them feel nice.

But, when you go

and see a doctor

and you talk to them about your problems,

the doctor is actually following a system.

One of the most popular systems is the Calgary-Cambridge method of patient interviewing,

which is like a whole system for what sort of questions, as a doctor,

you need to ask the patient in order to make sure

that you've got all the symptoms

and all the signs

and all that kind of stuff.

When the doctor examines you

and listens to your heart

and like examines your abdomen

and all of that kind of stuff,

again, they are following a system.

They are not just making up as they go along.

If they have lots and lots of experience, then yes, then, you know,

the systematization of the thing for doctors starts to become second nature.

They start to pattern recognize, and so, they're following a system,

even though they often don't realize they're following a system,

because the system has been

so drilled into them

that they can now kind of go a little bit off-script.

But, even then, even

if you're like a surgeon with 50 years of experience

and you're like the world's best person,

you still literally have to fill out a checklist before every single operation

and at the end of every single operation to make sure

that you've checked the boxes for the important stuff

that the system needs to make sure the patient has a good result.

Now, in our professional lives, in these sort of work environments,

like in medicine or in aviation or in like Formula 1,

the idea of building systems into it is like fairly standard.

Like with your job, you probably have systems that you have to follow.

Systems for HR, systems for marketing, sales, operations, finance, the whole shebang.

Businesses are built on the idea of systems.

And I would like to offer for your consideration

that we can totally build those sorts of systems into our personal lives

as well,

for pretty much any goal that we want to work towards.

And there is a really nice visual

that I got from my friend Jeff Su

that sort of describes the value of a system.

So, if you imagine this kind of graph, we've got effort over here,

and so, this is sort of what the line might look like

if you're trying to do stuff without a system to it.

Whereas, this is what the line looks like

if you're trying to do something

that does have a system attached to it.

It will take a little bit more effort in the initial stages to build

the system,

but then very quickly the fact that you are now using a system,

i.e. there is a systematized set of actions

or processes or steps

that you're going to follow,

it takes actually quite a lot of work

and quite a lot of effort out of the process of doing the thing.

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So, now let's get back to it.

I'll give you a personal example. doing weight training

when I started out for about 5 years,

and I was not following a system.

I was going to the gym a couple of times a week

when I had the time,

and I was kind of doing whatever I felt like.

I was going with the flow.

And sure, this was kind of fun.

I'd go to the gym with my friends and stuff,

but I made almost no progress in my physique

or in my health levels

or in any of those things

because I wasn't I wasn't following a system.

Recently, I started following a system.

I got a personal trainer, and he programs my workouts,

and I see him three times a week at the same time slot.

We follow a similar kind of workout plan with progressive overload.

There is a system behind the thing,

and for the first time in my life,

I'm finally seeing progress

when I'm actually at the gym

because I'm following a system.

I'm not just screwing around

and making stuff up

as I go along

and hoping for the best.

I'm following a prescribed system

that people have already figured out to get to a desired result,

which is to try

and attempt to get a little bit more jacked

and to reduce my visceral fat levels.

Let's take another example.

Let's say you are starting a business

and you're doing sales calls for the first time.

Like you're getting on the phone

or a Zoom call with your prospects

and trying to sell them your product.

Not having a system would be hopping on the call,

making it up as you go along,

just sort of vibing and going with the flow.

Having a system means

that you would have some kind of sales script

that you would follow.

You're probably saying a similar thing each time in the opening

and in the closing.

You have a list of objections that they might say, like, you know,

the price is too expensive

or I don't have the time

or let me think about it,

and you have defined responses

that you figured out

because you built a system around it.

You have a system for following up with them.

Now, in that world,

the business that follows a system for their sales process is going to make

way more money compared to the noob business

that has no system around this

because they're just sort of making stuff up

as they go along.

And this is the core idea behind why systems are way more likely to

lead you to success

because success,

if you define it

as achieving your goals with balance

and enjoyment along the way,

is really just about executing on a set of action.

Now, if you are making up those actions every time depending on how you

feel,

you're a lot less likely to get to any particular goal compared to

if you have a system

or a set of processes

that you're following every time.

Now, after all of that opining,

I would like to share with you five systems that I think,

if you were to incorporate into your life,

would drastically increase your chances of success.

The first system that I think is incredibly helpful is some kind of goal-setting

system.

When it comes to achieving success,

having goals is really important

because then at least you know what you're aiming for.

You don't have to be wedded to the goals,

you don't have to be attached to them,

you don't have to be upset

if you don't manage to achieve a goal in the time frame

that you wanted,

but it's so useful to actually have a goal to shoot for in the

first place.

Now, the way most people do this is sort of like before they have

a system,

it's sort of like, you know,

the New Year comes around

and they'll sort of vaguely set some New Year's resolutions

that I want to stop procrastinating

or I want to go to the gym more often

and they just they won't have a systematic approach to goal setting.

And so what happens is

that they start something

and they sort of meander a little bit

and then they quit

or they start something else

and they kind of go all over the place

and then they quit

or they set a goal for something else

and then,

you know, they've taken one step

and then they quit

and it's all this sort of like general kind of mess

when you approach goal setting

as something that you do ad hoc whenever you have the time

and you just sort of try

and figure it out

as you go along.

Whereas, after you have a system for goal setting

and there are lots of them out there

and I don't really care

which one you use

but like you can just Google it

or ask ChatGPT or Claude to give you a system for goal setting.

I've got my own it's called the GPS system there'll be some videos over

there somewhere on the channel.

But after you have a system for goal setting,

you have a systematic process

that you can follow every 3 months

or every year or however frequently you want to do it.

And so for example,

my process starts with like vision where there's like a life compass section where

you figure out like what you actually want your life to look like very

long term and what what are your core values

and that kind of stuff.

Then we turn it into a 3-year sketch where you can use like a

vision board or something to figure out where you want to be 3 years

from now and then we make quarterly quests

which are like 90-day goals.

Again, all of this stuff will be linked down below cuz we've got videos

on the channel about all this stuff

so I'm not going to expand on it in too much detail.

And then after we figured out our quarterly quests,

we have a weekly process of like prioritization

and reflection that I call the balanced week blueprint.

And you might think

that this stuff is a little bit much

but like it doesn't take

that long to do.

It takes maybe a couple of hours to do like a life compass exercise

to really figure out what direction you want to go with your life.

It takes maybe half an hour to do like a vision board 3-year sketch.

It's it's quite fun thing to do as well.

It takes maybe half an hour every quarter to define quarterly quests.

And what you're doing with this systematic approach to goal setting is

that you're really trying to decide what are the small number of goals I

actually want to work towards.

And most of us go through life without really stopping back to zoom out

a little bit and just actually think about this.

It's so easy to get fixated on the day-to-day.

We're too busy at work

and then we get home

and then there's the kids

and the stuff and whatever

and there's not enough time

and not enough energy.

And yet if we just take a few hours once in a

while to zoom out

and follow a systematic process for goal setting,

we are far more likely to end up working towards goals

that are intrinsically motivated,

goals that we actually want to work towards,

rather than casually working towards goals

that are just a subconscious result of what society has told us,

what our parents have told us, or what I don't know,

the a previous version of our self decided to do.

The second major system I would really recommend installing into your life is some

kind of time management system.

And again, I've made videos about this on the channel,

they'll be linked down below if you want to check them out.

But when it comes to achieving any goal at all, achieving every goal,

as we talked about, is a series of actions.

And in order to do those actions, we have to do some work.

And there are generally three inputs into work, and that is time, energy,

and focus, assuming you're the one doing the work.

If you have a team and you have other team members doing the work,

then you have the other metric of money

because you're hiring the team

and getting them to do the work stuff,

but for the most part, time, energy,

and focus are the three fundamental resources that individuals invest in doing work,

taking actions to achieve goals, which ultimately, fingers crossed, leads us to success,

whatever that definition of success is for us.

And on a very basic level, the most important one of these is time.

Time is the primary thing,

because we only have 168 hours every week to do stuff. 168 hours.

Most of us spend like 56 of those sleeping,

and maybe another 12 of them eating and going to the toilet and stuff.

So what that basically leaves is 100 hours.

Nice round number.

If you have a job and you have to I don't know,

spend 60 You just, you know,

you literally just got 40 hours left every single week to do all of

the things that you want to do.

If you imagine that like most people have a screen time of like 6

hours a day,

all of those 40 hours suddenly disappear.

And so you realize very quickly,

and maybe if you're the sort of person who watches this channel,

and if you're at this point in the video,

that like there's actually not

that many hours in every week to do all of the things

that you want to do.

Which means that if we want to be able to do the work

that helps us take the actions

that helps us get to our goal,

that helps us eventually get to success,

we want to be good at managing our time

and ideally instead of having to again make this up

as we go along,

ideally we have a system

that makes it a lot easier for us to manage our time

so that we can make time for the important stuff

and get rid of the stuff

that is less important.

But, there are three key factors that I think everyone should have.

Number one, a good time management system involves time blocking,

which is basically where you stick blocks in your calendar for the stuff

that is important to you.

For example, I have a weekly date night with my wife.

That is time blocked.

I go to the gym three times a week.

That is time blocked.

I have two filming days a week where I work on YouTube videos.

Those are time blocked in the calendar.

The more you can intentionally decide how you want to be using your time

ahead of time,

rather than having to make a decision in the moment

and then sort of being at the mercy of your mood

or your energy levels,

the easier it is to reliably do the actions consistently

that are going to get you to your goals.

That's not to say that you should have no room for spontaneity.

You can totally have free time in the calendar

as well where you can just do whatever you want.

But, in general, the people

that are most likely to achieve goals are the ones who actually make the

time to achieve those goals.

Perhaps unsurprisingly.

Factor number two that every good time management system should have is a method

for prioritization.

Now, you probably have more things you would like to do compared to the

time that you actually have to do them cuz you're probably an ambitious person

and you have lots of goals

and you want to live a healthy balanced life.

But, as you've probably realized it's actually impossible to do all the things

and so we need to prioritize what are the few

that are the most important.

And thirdly, ideally every good time management system should have some kind of component

of reflection where you look at how you've been spending your time,

you reflect on it,

and then you use

that reflection process to adjust your time blocking

and prioritization system.

For me, I try my best to do a weekly review

or reflection and this is just a series of questions

that I ask myself.

It takes about 20 minutes

and it's a good way of making sure

that I'm continually re-aligning to the goals

that I want to achieve

and making changes to my schedule

if like life happens.

System number three that I think would benefit most people in their life is

some kind of health optimization

or health operating system.

I call mine health OS cuz it's just kind of cute.

And what this is is a system

that you can follow on autopilot

that gets you to your health goals.

So, this involves things like sleep and diet and exercise.

Now, before you have some kind of system around your health,

you sleep roughly whenever you feel tired

and you wake up whenever you want to wake up

or or with your alarm

if you have some kind of like work to go to.

Your diet is like you're

so you're sort of making it up

as you go along.

Your exercise, you're sort of doing random stuff whenever you can find the time

to do the thing.

And this is why most people are on average not particularly healthy.

But, if you're building a system into your life where you're following a set

of processes around your sleep,

your diet, your exercise,

then you're much more likely to be in a better place.

So, what might be the system for optimizing your sleep?

Again, we have done videos about it.

I'll link them down below, but, you know,

getting 8 hours a night is generally very helpful.

Having the room set to 19° C is generally very helpful.

That tends to be the temperature for most people that optimizes sleep.

Defining like when you want bedtime to be, like, "Hey,

I'm going to sleep 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m."

or whatever,

generally helpful.

The more you can stick to a consistent bed and wake time,

the more your circadian rhythms actually line up

and so the less likely you are to be tired

or groggy or have low energy throughout the day.

Of course, there is the classic tip to view morning sunlight

as per Andrew Huberman,

which is again helpful for entraining our circadian rhythm.

You've got things like no phone in the bedroom,

getting rid of your phone

so that you're not like browsing TikTok

or Reddit at like 2:00 in the morning,

which is another thing that would destroy your sleep.

I personally like having a Kindle on my bedside table

because then if I'm struggling to go to sleep,

I can just read like a spirituality book

or something on Kindle

and that gets me to sleep pretty quickly.

If you want, you can use some kind of sleep tracker.

I wear a Whoop.

I've got like a I'm using this for the last like 380 days

or something.

I've got a 380-day streak on it.

And so this gives me a sleep score.

And so generally with any kind of system,

having some sort of metric

that you can look at to see how effective is your system performing

and then being able to sort of adjust your system based on the metric

is generally quite helpful.

It's not absolutely essential,

but for most things having some way to measure the number actually does genuinely

help.

And all of these is just a series of steps.

And sure, most people don't do all of these things absolutely all the time,

but having a system

which is sort of a set of defaults

that you're going to follow most of the time is going to be way

more likely for you to have healthy sleep.

And obviously we know

that sleep is one of those things

that like contributes to every other area of our life.

When it comes to diet, if for every single meal, you know,

three meals a day for like 7 days a week,

if every single time you had to figure out what you want to do

in terms of what you're eating

or what you're cooking

or what you're buying from the grocery store,

A, you end up wasting a ton of time in like mental decision fatigue

and ordering random takeaways

and going to random restaurants

and then your calories

and macros and all

that kind of stuff are off

and then you end up being pretty unhealthy.

And so, what busy people

and especially people with kids tend to find is

that actually systematizing the household diet is really,

really, really helpful.

Like knowing that Tuesdays are like Chinese takeout Tuesdays,

knowing that Thursday is a movie night with the kids

and therefore we're going to order pizza,

knowing that like we're going to meal prep on the Sunday

and then batch prepare the breakfast for the whole week

and batch prepare the lunches for the whole week

so the kids can take them to school

or whatever the situation might be.

Almost everyone who you consider to be successful probably has some kind of system

for their diet and their nutrition.

It doesn't have to be fancy, it doesn't have to be private chef levels,

but just having a method

that you are following

which means you don't have to think about what the hell am I going

to eat for these 21 meals every single week will save you a huge

amount of time and also make you way healthier.

And then of course,

having some kind of system that you're following for your exercise.

What I do personally is weight training three times per week.

I try to do 40 minutes of zone two cardio through like casual running

about three times a week.

I aim to do yoga about one

or two times a week for general flexibility

and mobility and of course,

I aim to get 10,000 steps per day

because there's a good amount of evidence

that like the more steps you take the healthier you're going to be

and so I have a walking treadmill for my desk some of the time

as well.

And again, this is a system.

The gym sessions are in the calendar,

the runs should be more systematized for me cuz they're currently not.

I kind of make time for running when I when I have the time,

which is why I'm a lot less consistent with this than I am with

the gym where it's actually in the calendar.

And so, if you have some kind of system that you're following,

some set of default actions that you're taking every week,

your health is far more likely to be good compared to someone who does

not have that kind of system.

And it's like that phrase goes, the healthy man has 99 wishes,

the unhealthy man has only one.

If you are sick or unhealthy,

then that is a massive drain on practically every other area of your life

as well.

And so, you might as well follow some kind of system.

Again, if you're not sure, just ask ChatGPT,

watch some YouTube tutorials for like and it doesn't have to be fancy,

but it does take a lot of the guesswork

and a lot of the mental decision fatigue out of the process of keeping

on top of your health.

System number four that I think everyone would benefit from is some kind of

system to keep on top of the relationships

that matter to you the most.

Now, this is where it can sometimes sound weird being like,

why would you build a system for relationships?

Relationships shouldn't be systematized.

That's just not true.

Like if you ask any like marriage counselor

or marriage therapist or read any book about what makes a successful marriage.

Actually, what a lot of it comes down to is systems.

Making sure you have a weekly date night

and that it's in the calendar

and that both parties know

that it happens every Sunday evening,

for example.

That is an example of a system.

Doing something like regular relationship reviews,

maybe once a month where you

and the spouse or you

and your partner sit down

and actually reflect on the state of your relationship

and if there's any like minor grievances

that you haven't had a chance to bring up

and you talk about those things.

Again, sounds weird, but it's incredibly helpful.

Me and my wife were seeing a relationship therapist before we got married just

cuz I got some advice from a friend saying

that like relationship therapists are amazing.

And he recommended we do relationship reviews.

We read a couple of books about how to have a successful marriage

that also would bullish on relationship reviews.

This is a way of systematizing your relationship

so that you do the sensible things without having to think too hard about

them.

As you become super busy at work,

it's generally very helpful to block out holidays in advance.

So a lot of the most successful entrepreneurs I know really,

really take their personal life and their relationships very seriously.

And so at the start of the year,

before they do any of their business planning,

they will block out in the calendar, okay, this is holiday with the spouse,

this is holiday with the kids,

this is we're going to take all of August off for a sabbatical.

Because if you don't block all of that stuff out in advance,

then the work and life commitments will just sort of fill the gaps.

And so you've got to be intentional about blocking this stuff out in advance.

This is building a system around your relationships.

The most social people I know are not just randomly going to social events,

especially once they become adults and start having kids and start becoming busy.

They start doing standing order social events.

One of my friends in that who's very intentional about relationships,

he was like living in Austin for a few years,

and so he and his wife set up a weekly meet-up at the local

lake.

Anyone was invited, so they just invited all their friends.

They're like, "Hey, we're going to be at this lake 8:00 a.m. every Saturday

morning,

and then we're going to go for breakfast afterwards.

If you can make it, come join us."

And they did this every single week for 4 years,

and this was an amazing way for them to maintain relationships

and friendships with people

that they already knew.

And also was a fantastic way to get to know new people because,

you know, new people would be like, "Oh, you know,

my friend Johnny's in town,

like let's bring him along to this Saturday or to social event,

this like 8:00 a.m. every Saturday lake meet-up."

So, there's things like

that that you can do

that systemize the stuff

that you want to do in your social life

as well.

This is the value of like a monthly book club

or a weekly lads video game night

or monthly movie night with your friends,

and especially when people get busy.

Like, if you're watching this and you're young and you're like,

"Holy I can't believe like why do you have to stick a calendar event

for hanging out with your friends?"

If you're watching this and you're above the age of 25,

you know that you're busy, your friends are busy,

especially if you're watching this and you have kids or your friends have kids.

It's such a total freaking nightmare trying to schedule people and get them together,

which is why having a system around it can really, really help.

And I don't know if it's a thing in the rest of the world,

but in the UK,

there's like a real tradition of like sending physical Christmas cards to the people

that you know.

And so, we really suck at this,

but like I've got some friends who are really good at sending an annual

Christmas card,

and it's amazing how such a small thing can actually sustain a friendship for

decades and decades because you know you've got this annual touch point where you

just send a nice handwritten Christmas card,

maybe there's a photo of the family,

maybe there's a bit of an update about what you're up to.

And there is a system around this.

The people that remember birthdays, they probably don't have the birthday in your head,

they probably have it in their calendar.

And the people I know who are the most thoughtful about birthdays,

not only have your birthday in the calendar,

but they'll have a recurring event every year in their to-do list

that like 2 weeks before the birthday reminds them

that,

"Hey, Ali's birthday's coming up on whatever."

And so, they'll start thinking about the gift

or the card and stuff like 2 weeks in advance.

All of these are different examples of systemizing your relationships

so that it takes the guesswork out of it,

it takes the the decision fatigue out of it,

and ultimately it nudges you towards doing the actions

that you know are going to make it more likely

that you achieve your goal.

In this case, it's to maintain a good relationship with your spouse

and kids and friends

and family and stuff.

The final system I want to talk about in this video,

and we could talk about this for for absolutely ever

because I love this stuff.

This would be some kind of system around what do you do by default

when your paycheck comes in,

assuming you have a job or assuming you have a business.

And in general, most personal finance advisers

and gurus and stuff who like think about this stuff a lot

and advise people about it,

talk about building a system to put your finances on autopilot

as much as possible.

So, the people that end up not saving

or investing any money are the ones who get the paycheck,

and then they do whatever they want with it.

And then they're like, "Oh, hey, at yeah, at some point,

if there's any left over, then I'll invest it or then I'll save it."

That often never works because there is often very little left over.

Let's say this is your monthly paycheck.

As soon as the paycheck comes in,

automatically some percentage of it is set aside for savings,

and it goes into a a savings account, for example.

Automatically some percentage of it is set aside for investments,

and it automatically goes into the investment account via Robinhood

or the Roth IRA

or whatever the system is depending on your country.

Some percentage of it is automatically set aside for tax

if you are in a country

or in a situation where you have to pay your own taxes.

Some is automatically set aside for bills.

And then you know

that you can kind of do whatever you want with the rest

because at least the basics

that are going to keep you out of prison

and that are going to grow your financial nest egg have been taken care

of.

This is an example of a personal finance system.

It is a series of actions

or steps that you do every time you get your paycheck

that reduces the need for guesswork,

and if you can automate as much of this as possible,

it means that you don't even have to make the decision every single time

cuz it automatically goes into the savings account

and the investment account

and the bills account

and the tax account,

and then you know what's left over.

Whereas, if this is not automated,

then every single month you have to actively make the decisions.

And the problem with actively make making decisions is

that we generally make decisions emotionally rather than logically,

even though we like to think of ourselves as logical creatures.

Actually, like 99% of our decisions are made purely based on emotion.

And because our emotions are like fluctuating,

if we're feeling great and the paycheck hits, then fantastic.

We might be, you know,

be living in line with our our future self

and like putting stuff into savings

and investments.

But if we're not feeling great and the paycheck comes in,

we might be doing a lot less sensible things

when it comes to our money.

And so what a system does is

that it removes the need for you to make

that decision every single time.

You make the decision ahead of time, you set it and forget it.

And that tends to be how the people

that succeed at saving

and investing through uh the mechanism of something like a regular paycheck,

they tend to have some kind of system around it.

Now, hopefully this video has convinced you

that it's very helpful to have systems around your personal

and professional life to help you achieve your goals.

And if you're interested in learning more about the specific system

that I've developed around goal setting,

then there will be a video right over here,

which is about the GPS method.

Now, GPS stands for goal, plan, and system.

So, it's another video that's about systems,

but it will go into much more detail about specifically how to set goals,

how to create plans,

and then how to build systems to make sure you actually stick to the

plan.

So, that'll be right over there.

And thank you so much for watching, and I will see you over there.

Bye-bye.