It is not those who originate an idea that receive the ultimate credit, but those who see it to fruition.
Those who see things to fruition are arguably more creative than any inventor of new ideas. For they bring them to life, truly.
With that said, what separates those who are able to bring an idea into fruition time after time again from those serially fall short?
While there is no definitive answer to this question (or any other), I am reminded of a quote from a book by James Clear called Atomic Habits. In the book James describes that achieving that which we set out to do is less about dreaming bigger, and more about optimizing our granular day-to-day activities. While the entire book is arguably the top resource in any achiever’s toolbox, one quote stuck out to me in particular:”
We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.”
I made the mistake once of telling a wise friend of mine that he needed to dream bigger and stop worrying about small things.
His response to me?
“Big things are made from little things.”
And from that day forward my entire worldview changed.
No longer was I thinking that I needed to set my eye on higher peaks and ignore seemingly small problems that routinely popped up. Instead I realized the answer to my own question, of what separates those who truly create from those who only dream of it – organization.
You see, the graveyard is littered with those who thought they could willpower their way to achievement. Now this is not to say that a strong will won’t get you far, but it isn’t enough.
To go all the way we need systems.
That being said, what even is a system? Most of us have heard about them and understood how to apply them at least on a basic or intuitive level, but rarely have appreciation for the massive endeavors constructed all around us that quite frankly wouldn’t have been possible if our only solution to a hard problem was to put in overtime. These feats take more than just effort alone, they take a restructuring of the entire system itself.
If we have too many people unable to get to work in a timely manner due to traffic, the solution would not be to tell everyone to drive faster. That would be increasing danger and not to mention the fact that everyone would likely not even arrive to their destinations any quicker. A system would be something like to public transportation, a bus or a subway that both takes people off the roads (freeing up traffic) and gets everyone where they need to go quicker while conserving on fuel.
A system is a sustainable way to make the boat move faster overall.
The highest achievers in life only think about systematic improvements – not linear ones.
And by that logic, I implore you all to look at life, not as a game of exerting more effort, but as an engineer would approach the construction of a railroad – systematically. If emails are taking up an hour of your day every day, don’t seek to work at emails more quickly, instead create an FAQ or templates that will reduce the time to 10 minutes. If you routinely fall asleep late because you’re on your phone since it’s next to you charging at night, make it policy to charge your phone across the room (an added benefit is that you’ll have to walk to turn off your alarm)!
It may seem small, but big things ARE made from small things. How many of these little procedural changes do you have to make each day, that save you an hour here or ten minutes there, before you are able to accomplish in days what took you weeks or even months? The answer – pretty quickly.
Let us continually strive from SYSTEMATIC improvements instead of linear gains, so that we can have our names written down alongside those who DID instead of those who only dreamed of doing.
After all, a one percent improvement on each day is 37x more output at the end of each year!
