Welcome to Issue 03 of the weekly Own The Cow newsletter: a deep dive into how to take control of your work and financial future in the face of boundless uncertainty. This week brings you the pragmatic power of systems thinking, aligning goals and building good habits.

Develop a systems mindset

We don't often think about systems when it comes to our work and life planning. Many people relegate the concept of systems to companies, governments, technology and more. Look at most businesses and the mix of systems they use to achieve success. Many of the tools, processes and need for strategy, goals, marketing, sales and customer experience are the same. It's the product and services that are different. You can apply this thinking to your life. Deliberately applying systems thinking to how you design your life can transform your trajectory. Everything operates within a system. Such an approach can increase your chance of success and help you manage uncertainty.

When you adopt a systems mindset you'll see the consequences of your own actions. You'll understand how things unfold over time. Your situation may have been influenced by what you've done before or not done. You'll see the connections in any situation. When you can see how what you did last year, or three years ago has influenced your ability to make decisions today, you are in a much better position to make smarter decisions going forward. Think about the actions you are taking now, or planning to take now. The actions you take today to designing your work will pay off at some point in the future. Inaction can keep you stuck or move you backward. While we can't control uncertainty, applying a systems approach to life is something you can control to lower or spread out your risk.

The key to adopting a systems mindset is to move from thinking linear to circular. The importance of this is to recognize that life isn't linear. Everything is interconnected. Think of this as a virtuous cycle where each trip around takes you forward towards your goals.

Along the way you get feedback for what's working or not working. This allows you to course correct before a situation becomes too untenable. Think of these feedback loops as cause and effect. Some are reinforcing, which can be good and bad. In this case, actions may reinforce bad results and pick up speed. Or they may reinforce forward momentum. Balancing feedback loops stabilize your situation. They are the type that self correct.

On the surface you might think the concept of systems thinking is hard. It need not be overcomplicated. To put it simply, applying a system to your life is to combine related elements working together to deliver a desired outcome. With a system for your life, you can respond to change more effectively. You'll have tools for pushing through new obstacles. Systems are what help you make progress.

For more on systems thinking, check out The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.

The aerodynamic alignment of goals

With a system in place, you need to know where you're going. Or at least where you want to go. In sailing, you set your course. In theory you want to get there in a straight line. But the winds often thwart your intention and you need to tack and gybe to arrive at your destination. It's never linear. The same goes for your life. You think you know where you want to go yet forces outside your control impact your course. Maybe along the way you discover something new that enhances your original plan. The key is to have a direction and not let the wind blow you off course. Once you know where you're headed, then set some goals to get you there. Your goals should align with your purpose. I asked you to consider writing your purpose down last week. Think of this as the meaning of your work. What change you seek to make in the world? Why you're doing what you're doing? I was listening to Angela Duckworth this past week when she mentioned how Will Smith talks about the aerodynamic alignment of goals. That speaks of speed and efficiency. Just like teams do so much more when they're aligned, having your purpose, direction and goals aligned with each other reduces friction. And why wouldn't you want to reduce the friction given how much life throws at you?

The thing we all know about goals is they are easy to set. But hard to achieve especially if they are particularly ambitious. Or if you don't believe you can achieve them. You've no doubt heard about Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Generally the bigger the goal, the more vague, and thus the harder to achieve momentum. I have the goal of financial independence. Yet that goal provides no clue exactly what steps I need to take and a framework for tracking progress. It needs to be more specific. I need smaller goals that build on each other to climb that mountain.

The brain also hates change. Setting big goals that need us to think, act and work differently are doomed to fail because of it. Some people say we shouldn't set goals at all but rather have a focus which creates a path. Goals, if they are smart, have a finish line. Your personal growth does not. Your brain doesn't reach a destination and park, enjoying the view. It wants to keep going.

I now look at goals as milestones along the journey. Smaller, achievable goals within a larger purpose give you momentum. Yet sometimes we'll be working hard on our goals or purpose and feel like we're going nowhere. Like the sail boat coming to a halt because the wind died. And then once adrift we question what we're doing, and we give up. This is why it's easy to set goals but hard to achieve them.

Think of big goals as floors in a building. You're not going to get there without walking the steps between. Those steps are the smaller goals that get you there.

Get off the couch

To prevent the inevitable lulls from sidelining your progress, not only do you have to believe and want to live your purpose, to hit your goals you need to build good habits that make it easy to stick with something. Charles Duhigg has a great book on the topic, The Power of Habit. Perhaps you're already familiar with it. If not, the key to building successful habits is to create habit loops (there's the concept of circular thinking again). Such a loop is a repeatable cue that kicks off a routine that results in a reward. The cue is especially important starting out to remind you of the thing you need to do before it becomes a habit. Like the transition from learning to drive to hopping in the car and going.

If you've now written your purpose, set some goals and thought about what habits you can create to make it real, how do you know you're on the right path? How do you know it's what you want? You can't know if you'll be good or successful from the couch. The only way to predict success is to get to work. Assuming you are well down a career path, you may likely already love what you're doing. It may be a matter of diversifying your revenue with a side project. Yet few of us know with certainty our purpose until we try. Few of us know even mid to late career because we've been on autopilot.

If you try something new and fail, great! Scratch it off the list and get back out there. Each time you try, fail, get up again, you grow. You discover something new about yourself and your capabilities. You're making connections through doing that alter your course. You might discover something unthinkable a year ago that seems obvious today. You can only predict failure if you never get off that comfy sofa and try. Look at what you say you want to do and what it takes. If it means getting up at 5:30 am and working for an hour but you hit snooze when the bell tolls, you really don't want that thing enough. Everything worthwhile requires a climb.

Staying on the couch only keeps you in a pessimistic spiral and ensures failure. Use the couch as a pitstop to recharge and assess. We all have to make sacrifices in the short term without seeing much reward.

Imagine the power of a solid system that works for you combined with aerodynamically aligning your goals with your purpose. Imagine how much progress you could make by building good habits on top. Just imagine how much better equipped you'd be to face unforeseen crises. Like the one we're in now.

"Don't think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we've acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act."
- Steven Pressfield, Do the Work