Goals, Systems, and Fulfillment
I've become increasingly convinced that systems matter more than goals. I rediscovered this perspective while reading Scott Adams' book recently.
The beauty of this approach is that it doesn't depend on whether you're an employee or a freelancer. It's a system that applies to whatever time you have available, whether that's a few hours per week because you have a job and a family, or whether you have the entire day available.
This is one of the mental models that James Clear promotes in his Atomic Habits, but it's also inherent and implicit in many other mental models. I was somewhat hesitant at first because people might use systems as an excuse to avoid setting goals. However, the two don't necessarily exclude each other. Approaching systems, and approaching them the right way, matters because anything can be approached the wrong way.
It's a mental model and approach that makes sense and adapts better to a future that will be uncertain from many perspectives. It can be seen as falling under developing uncertainty skills, which is a very important skill.
Two Essential Time Horizons
Let's keep it simple. The most important two time horizons are:
Next hour: Every small action either moves you toward your long-term direction or away from it.
10 years: This is about establishing direction. The 10-year horizon helps clarify what truly matters and what principles should guide decisions today.
This also comes from James Clear:
Every small step should move in the direction of your 10-year goal. The 10-year target isn't about having every detail mapped out. It's about having a direction.
The Aim
The aim is to become as free and independent as possible, but just as important is enjoying the process each day while trying to be useful, filling each day with at least a drop of fulfillment. It's a big ambition, but pursuing it deliberately feels like the only way to avoid leaving your life entirely to chance.
Mental Models
- Consider that there will always be better solutions being built. Don't wait for perfection.
- Always think about the next move. Strategy is dynamic, not static.
- Understand where to focus your energy. Not everything deserves equal attention.
Soft Skills and Hard Skills
It makes sense to divide the skills that help you improve into two categories: soft skills and hard skills. The real challenge is how to approach taking action to improve both types of skills. They require different methods, different mindsets, and different approaches to practice and learning. This changes in every phase, for every topic, and in every type of situation.
The key is flexibility and intuition: the subconscious mental models that let you spot patterns instantly in any situation, processing as many variables as possible. How well this works depends on how well trained your brain is. This is why continuous learning and practice matter, not just for acquiring skills, but for developing the pattern recognition that helps you apply them effectively.
The Margin Problem
Creating margin is essential, but here's the tension: you only have a limited number of hours. Do you use them to create more margin, or do you invest them directly in long-term goals?
One approach is to focus on the direction that makes the most sense for long-term goals. If you can't create margin in the short term, at least make sure your limited hours are pointed at something meaningful.
Even at an operational level, when ten hours a week might not seem enough, step back and consider which angle might reveal the solution. The goal is to find the perspective that lets you leverage your efforts to the maximum and make the best use of those limited hours. Sometimes the constraint itself forces you to discover more efficient approaches you would never have found with unlimited time.
An Exploration Approach
Approach everything from an exploration and experimentation perspective until you understand what to double down on and invest more in (time, energy, and money).
The challenge is finding a way to continuously generate ideas about what to explore and experiment with, keeping track of them in a lean system. The goal is to get feedback that tells you whether to try something new or continue with what you're doing. With limited time, you want to iterate and experiment regularly.
Start small. Something that can be experimented with in just a week, even with only 10 hours available. It could be reading a book or exploring a topic, building something, running an experiment, taking action, or anything that moves you forward. The key is to keep moving, keep exploring, keep learning.
This approach allows you to test ideas quickly, learn from each experiment, and gradually identify what deserves deeper investment. The constraint of limited time forces you to be selective and efficient, which often leads to better decisions than unlimited exploration would.
When you find something worth investing in, invest more. If that thing you were investing in stops working, return to the exploration phase.
Free time should be reserved for what sparks your curiosity, interests you, generates ideas, enables experiments, or simply feels right: evenings, weekends, and holidays.