The Importance of Systems
They work when your brain doesn’t
All humans make mistakes — You and I are no exception.
Systems is a broad term, but they come in many forms such as algorithms, habits, workflows, etc. The reason why they are so important is because humans are mistake prone and inherently lazy. That’s not to say humans are all dumb and lazy, but we all have little voices that try to have us take the easy/wrong way out. Some people are just better at not listening to those voices as often.
This is where systems come into play, and in this context we will define a system as a pre defined set of steps designed to accomplish a task. A system works when you don’t, while you are sleeping, and if automated at the exact moment you need it.
I’d like to give you a couple examples of a system in practice so hopefully you see the importance of them, and can start looking for areas of your life to implement them.
An automated system for computing workloads
In the context of AWS, it is possible using tools like auto scaling, SNS, and CloudWatch to automatically detect the health and usage of your instances, and add or remove them according to your desired configuration.
If you have a few compute instances running to support your application and one of them is suddenly unhealthy and offline, your production workloads could take a hit. However since EC2 comes with health checks enabled by default (they can’t be disabled), auto scaling will automatically start up a new one (or multiple, depending on your desired capacity).
You can then have a CloudWatch event that sees this new instances being started, trigger an SNS notification that is emailed to you at 3am while you are still sleeping that this has occurred. So by having an established system, you will have fixed your production issues without even having to wake up in the middle of the night! Beautiful.
A non-technical, behavior driven system
I like to think of habits as systems, because they both involve a set of actions that result in a desired outcome.
Your daily routine will build your habits, so if you start your days for example by waking up and going to the gym, after a few months/years then it will feel extremely challenging to not go to the gym first thing in the morning.
Building momentum into your life will allow you to continue doing the same desirable actions, even if you don’t want to, because we all know that motivation is fleeting. Allow your consistent behaviors to determine your actions, and know that by consistently doing the right behaviors you will reach desirable outcomes (maybe not on your timetable though).
Keep in mind that when trying to construct your most efficient routine, what you can directly alter is your behavior. This is where discipline comes in. You won’t be able to control the triggers life throws at you to get you to act a certain way, and sometimes you don’t always get the reward you are expecting (which isn’t always a bad thing).
Hopefully this was helpful to allow you to see the importance of systems in your life, whether professional or personal.
The example here are a little high level, but at the end of the day just break down desired rewards into processes you can act on, and this concept can be applied to just about anything.
Best of luck to you in your future endeavors, and I hope you continue to find happiness.
