I get asked what a system is on a daily basis, and it's something I've not been able to describe, as it's one of those head-y things that no one can truly understand.
But one thing we can all understand is an iPhone!
In this episode, I share how I approach systems, and from an iPhone approach.
The PKM Podcast: Where my co-host and I go a little deeper on psychology, learning, and discussing our opinions on the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) & productivity space.
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A Note On Transcriptions - In the interest of simplicity, I'm using Descript* to make podcast publishing as easy as possible. This means that sometimes the transcript won't match what I'm saying and sometimes it'll be hilariously different (tag me on Twitter telling me the funniest transcription you've found).
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
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Transcripts
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What do you and your iPhone have in common?
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You are both part of a system.
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And you both are a system in itself.
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But what actually is a system?
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An easy way to start is with an iPhone.
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Your iPhone is made out of 17 components each of the 17 components or pieces have
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been put together to serve a purpose.
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To allow you to listen to this podcast episode.
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Okay.
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Perhaps more than just listen to the podcast episode.
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Also to do the things that you want to do and if one of those pieces or parts
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can't communicate with the system.
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For example, your battery dies and you can no longer keep a charge.
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What can you do?
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Now apple has a tendency to lock down that components now
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it is possible to take it apart.
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If you have the specialist tools which means hiring special help they
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come in, they take things apart.
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They replace the battery, they put it together, but it will
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never work quite the same way.
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Again.
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And that's the same when it comes to using templates or other people's systems.
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There are so many courses that teach you how to be organized and productive.
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They talk about one specific app that you're supposed to use.
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One specific tool that will solve everything.
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One specific solution.
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But the problem with that is your components and their
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components are not the same.
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thing.
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You can't see the components of the system.
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You can't see the different pieces and you're interacting with pieces of that
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system, but also you have pieces that need to interact with those pieces.
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For example One of the pieces of me is time blindness.
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I struggle with reading a date.
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even if it's a couple of days, time, if it's in the next month,
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I think it's a whole month away.
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So traditional to do list apps which just show dates.
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Completely and utterly don't work for me I look at it and it's may
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as well be in a foreign language.
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Because one of the components for me is I need some form of translation matrix.
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If you will, if we use the language analogy, Again, To translate it into
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something that I can understand.
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And when you know what your system is and what the components of you are.
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When, you know, the components of you as a system.
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You're able to make sure that the components of other
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programs, softwares apps.
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Fit you.
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Going back to to-do lists every day, we have a lots of things
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that we're supposed to be doing.
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As a business owner now, for some people holding it in your head is enough for me.
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I forget things really quickly.
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And honestly, for most It's pretty difficult to store everything in our head.
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And so we know that's a component or a piece of what we struggle with.
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And so getting it out somewhere is what we need to have another component
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that you can use to make things easier.
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But that involves understanding the components of you.
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First and using them.
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However in traditional productivity advice.
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Sadly people are talking about how you just need to build better habits.
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Get better.
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Do this, do that.
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Now, if what you want from your system is to build better habits.
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Fine.
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That is great.
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And you can create a system to help you.
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But it has to be something that fits you.
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And it has to start from you because you have key components that make up your
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system and the way that you interact with an external system or another system.
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And they come together.
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If you don't recognize those components and realize that when another piece
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isn't fitting you like a battery's dying, you need to replace it.
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And when we go a little bit out of just ourselves our business is a
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system is a lot of different components that make up how we do what we do.
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It's clients, it's finances.
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It's all of the different pieces.
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And they need to work together.
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If you can't find pieces that work for you say, for example, you're trying to
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use mailChimp when you really hate it and it doesn't fit your brain it's like
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having your iPhone in Japanese when you can't speak Japanese at all of course
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you can learn Japanese if you have the time and want to do so but you only have
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a certain amount of time in the day.
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And if you've got to go and learn a new language just to do the things that you
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want to do it's really not going to help.
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Instead, you switch the language back to English.
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And that means creating something that starts from you.
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Now for some switching the language back to English is easier than others.
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And sometimes you don't even know it's in a foreign language.
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You just don't even know where to go.
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If that sounds like you and you want help figuring out your components,
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I'd like to help with one of the things that holds every single
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client of mine back to do lists.
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Wouldn't it be great to just wake up and know exactly what
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you need to do every single day.
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To be able to come to a place where you're like, oh, these are the
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things that I need to do today in order to do what I need to do today.
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The things that I want to get done, the timeframes that I have to make sure I
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follow up with clients instead of just having to guess and feel completely
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overwhelmed all the time you ended up exhausted, tired and want to be
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doing anything, but looking through a massive list, which it looks like
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it's written in a different language.
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If this sounds like something you're struggling with right now.
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I want to help with a translation layer to help with managing
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all of your, to do's and things you've got to do in your business.
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In a way that fits you, we're going to take your components and the way
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that you work and use them to create something that actually fits you
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instead of trying to teach you how to be better and quote unquote, not broken.
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There's nothing wrong with you.
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It's just the pieces of you aren't chatting very well together.
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And i'm going to help you in three weeks to do just that if this sounds
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interesting for you and you want to create something that is actually going to
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help you keep track of all your tattoos, then come and join me for the starter
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system workshop for task management.
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You can find out more at simplicity-specialist.com
