Ever set a goal but never got time to achieve it? Probably because you have so many other urgent things to do. But then again, you saw a course and be like, Oh this seems interesting I want to take this course, I wanna read that book, I need to start my own youtube channel, I need to do some research on that topic, I need to write that blog and make this new video and work on this amazing product idea that I have.
While you’re thinking about how many goals you want to achieve, you get called to a urgent meeting or a chore or by a friend and then never got enough time to work on that goal. Perhabs it became so overwhelming that you ended up giving up on it and feel bad about yourself cause you never achieve those goals of yours. You’re not alone!
Same thing’s been pestering me for long enough, university makes up 35 hours a week, then a remote job so add another 30 hours a week
But we have more than that in the wheel of life, we have relationships, health and work.
In relationship, we have family, friends and romance.
In health, we have mental, physical and spiritual.
In work, we have growth, money and mission.
When tomorrow is the last date to submit a assignment and a project deadline is next week, we have quiz coming up soon. Barely managing to cover 10 classes a week with a slack meeting everyday and having no idea about why the scraping bot was working yesterday but not today and the manager keeps pitching those new features we need to build and to speed up things.
My inner voice keeps telling me to study pure math and analysis for advanced algorithms, also with desire to study human psychology and philosophies to be smarter with humans and mastering emotions to remain calm and becoming a good observer. Always wanting to start a youtube channel to teach others what I know and give myself value by that. To launch my own startup and products and have insights about business.
Not to forget that I had relationships and health to give time. Having so many areas of life to improve but without a proper system, it didn’t take long to lose the grasp.
By the time I started losing control, I had over 100 books added in my readlist but the worst feeling of not making any progress towards it burdened everyday. Friends/Relationship to spend time with, to build healthier connections, for the happiness it brings and health goals I wanted to achieve. When the one wheel started falling off, I focused on that particular one more than I should’ve been, it wasn’t even in my control to save it but spending too much time on it scattered other things causing a domino effect and boom, it hit the next and next and next and you’ll see everything falling apart.
Next step? You realize you need to focus on all areas of your life, you have so many things to improve. You need to be mentally stronger so it won’t happen again, you need to be wiser so you won’t make same mistakes again, you need to find a new job and rebuild relationships and heal yourself. Guess what? Having too many goals without a system just makes it worse. Till you feel lost trying to figure out what actually is going wrong? You might think I need to be more disciplined to achieve all my goals but that just doesn’t last long.
You feel guilty for not making progress, then regret feeling guilty cause it stops you from being productive and feel bad for regretting, now good luck questioning your sanity thinking why am I feeling bad for the regret about the guilt. DARN! This feedback loop from hell.
Giving up on goals is never a wise choice, nor you should settle for that in such situations, neither did I. They are meant to pop up in your mind for a reason, universe showed you a sign of what you’re meant to be. This is not something to ignore, we need to find something that works.
Another sign from universe and I knew the very thing I needed, it’s time to build system instead of chasing goals altogether.
My life has been on untrained auto pilot, I woke up, did whatever I thought was urgent and felt like to do, and barely making time for important stuff which weren’t urgent. First step in creating a system is understanding goals and prioritizing them in a matrix, like a eisenhower matix
<img src="https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--DN2NIGwp--/f_auto/v1747592662/ugc/content_aa4f284e-5686-4875-98a8-f556b1fdfcb1?_a=BAMClqUq0" alt="image">
It divides goals/tasks in 4 quadrants
<ul>
<li>Important and urgent</li>
<li>Important but not urgent</li>
<li>Not important but urgent</li>
<li>Not important and not urgent</li>
</ul>
A system abstracts the long, complicated process and deliver only the relevant stuff to user making it less overwhelming and easy to work with. When processes becomes complicated, the wisdom says to automate them or hide complexity in any way.
What could be more complicated than life, you need a life operating system. Just like a computer OS which manages it’s memory, handle all processes and threads and make all connected devices work together. Your life also needs a OS which manages all areas of your life under the hood while you operate from a easy interface. It’s time to define your lifeOS.
One of the greatest thing universe guided me recently, was toward journaling. I created a analog system on notebooks cause the digital doesn’t feel real, I CAN’T TOUCH IT!!! My lifeOS consists on 4 main components, which I call
<ul>
<li>Second Brain (Notebook)</li>
<li>Words of wisdom (Diary)</li>
<li>Daily Dose (Diary)</li>
<li>Monthly Progress (Drawing Book)</li>
</ul>
If you’re wondering where did these names came from, I just made them up. Btw, being a creator of OS feels great with all those fancy terms.
Second brain has a section of redefining life, for manifesting my dream life as I’m already living it (Hell yeah! the power of subconscious mind and spirituality). Details of lifeOS and a framework to intentionally act like a person I want to become which I call my higher self. My long term goals, habits I want to create, my non negotiables, values, morals and ethics and everything that defines the way I live and I recognize myself by. Another section for journaling, where I occassionally write interesting journaling prompts or thought process to clear mind as it always drastically change my mood and makes me feel inspired. Lastly, I also write down any idea about a youtube video or for that blog cause my brain will forget to ever work on it if it’s not written.
The very cue which causes me to pause my work and grab my phone and scroll endlessly, I can replace the routine to grab my diary and write it down. You can’t end habits but can only replace routine triggered by same cue. If I’m conscious that I’m being tracked all the time with what I’m doing and what I’m feeling, I’m more conscious toward making it work for me.
Details of my lifeOS is for another blog and out of today’s scope. As I created it to handle emotions, transform myself, create new habits and break bad ones, achieve higher self, create healthier diet and lifestyles and making the most out of my time.
What’s relevant in this blog is a section I call “Habit Worthy” in Monthly Progress. AMWAP and key tasks in Daily dose. I write down monthly goals by looking at long term goals,. For example, Read 3 books, complete that course, increase endurance, fix sleep schedule.
In the daily dose, everyday I write down AMWAP (As many wins as possible) or achievements of the day before going to bed, to look at them and feel proud of what I accomplished in a day. Example of AMWAP are, I journaled today, read 40 pages, built that feature and give yourself kudos for achieving it and write 3 key tasks aligned with the monthly goal or any urgent task for the next day to accomplish.
A system makes achieving long term goals stress free and on auto pilot. You don’t need to beat yourself up for not making a progress toward reading those 100 books. You completed a key task of reading 40 pages and you can sleep peacefully, doing it everyday will make 3 books a month and 30+ books a year. That’s what a system does, it makes long term goals achievable by breaking them in monthly goals, and further into daily small goals while you’re stress free from whole overwhelming process of the goal. Sounds cook, isn’t it? Wait I misspelled cool.
The 2nd quadrant of Eisenhower matrix, the goals which are important but not urgent. They are often the ones which are ignored and never get worked on. It’s that call from inside of you to do something great, to write that book, to create a platform, to launch a product. But they weren’t urgent so you kept them back in your head to work “later” and then forgot about it in more urgent tasks.
You don’t need to follow someone else’s OS, you can come up with your own. Create what will work best for you, experiment, track yourself, find out what works the best for you. What do you need? Write down those non urgent but important goals in your long term goals and align your monthly goals with them, track them everyday and enjoy the ride on auto pilot. You just need to be smart about creating systems. Read books, study habits, take inspiration from other’s systems and learn how they handle stuff.
Little vent, daily.dev only gave me 10,000 characters to write and now I’m out of them, little too less for me to talk about things I love but I understand the pain of someone reading it, I appreciate your patience, I really do. Okayy, Moving on to next paragraph!
I never learnt the meaning of creating systems. Everytime I read, “Build a system for writing scripts”. I always interpreted it as, “Write down the scripts” completely omitting out the part about building system until I finally understood what it means, the hard way.
Some sufferings and rock bottoms are beautiful, the best lessons learnt in a way which weren’t possible without it.
That’s enough for today,
See you in the next blog.

Knowledge by Execution - Breaking Down Tech for the Mango Man (Aam Aadmi/Regular Person) - https://www.sknexus.org/

SK NEXUS

Achieving goals can feel overwhelming without a system, as urgent tasks often overshadow long-term aspirations. By prioritizing and organizing goals using the Eisenhower matrix, and incorporating systems like journaling and habit tracking, individuals can manage multiple aspects of life effectively. Creating a personalized life operating system helps automate progress towards goals while reducing stress. Focusing on long-term objectives turns them into manageable daily tasks, facilitating growth and success.

You Need To Create Systems, Not Just Goals

This was a good read, well done! - I would recommend posting this on your medium/blog as well since on Daily Dev sometimes long format stuff like this doesn’t perform well.

Personally, I just use my Obsidian notes to journal. Over there, every three days, I start a challenge. Inside it, I list all the things that should be done at all costs, their priorities, and hold myself accountable for all of the things in the list.
I track the progress of everything I do every day, and after three days, I just put all the data over there: what I succeeded in, failed in, what I need to work on, new goals, and after all this, the challenge starts again.
That’s the OS of my life.

Takeaway: You can’t end habits but can only replace routine triggered by same cue

Thank you for sharing. I’ve struggled with the same issue, and your post was a light in the dark. I truly appreciate it.

💯 True buddy thank you for sharing this it will help at all level of software engineering…