It’s all about the systems

I’m a big believer in having systems (or constructs) to help guide decisions and to put structure around what might otherwise be chaos.

I didn’t realize this until recently a friend of mine was asking for advice and pointed it out to me. And upon reflection, yep, I definitely do try to find a way to create a “system” to help manage my way to success.

A perfect case in point is Dragon Army’s PVTV: Purpose, Vision, Tenets & Values. You find can Dragon Army’s Purpose and Vision here, and our Tenets here.

We use this construct to help us be clear on what we’re trying to achieve and how we’re going to do it. It’s simple and to the point, yet full of inspiration and practical guidelines.

Similarly, I decided last year that reading is not just something I want to do more of, but need to do more of. So I put a plan in place to read a book a week in 2018, and I track that progress on this blog.

When it comes to note-taking and to-do’s, I follow a system of taking notes in an actual notebook (I use a hybrid bullet journal technique) and later scanning them (and tagging them) into Evernote. Important to-do’s are kept in that same notebook and less important to-do’s are kept in Google Tasks (which has a sweet integration with Gmail now.)

Point is: for me to be effective and efficient, creating (and sticking to) systems is the key.