About Steven AitchisonLife is made up of a series of systems which can be changed and tweaked to make our lives better. We all have systems going on in our lives; sleep, career, hobbies, relationships, money management, goals, personal hygiene, health, eating, etc.
I believe one of the key components of a successful life is to be able to manage all the systems in our lives as efficiently and as painless as possible. For example if we have a health problem, we have to look at the system of health in our life, dissect it and find out where the problem is lying and look at ways of fixing it. Similarly if we have a problem with managing our money, we dissect the money management system and look for the reasons we cannot manage our money correctly, then look at ways of fixing it.
What I’ve come to realise is that when these systems are working well our lives tend to go well and everything is hunky dory, but when one of the systems fail, it causes the others to fail in some way as well. It’s like a cog in a machine, if one of the cogs break then it effectively breaks the whole machine.
I recently realised this as I was writing my latest guide on getting 5 hours of sleep and feeling great. Sleep is a system which has a set of subsystems, which, if tweaked correctly, can help us to get a great nights sleep, give us more energy and allow us to sleep less. We just have to look at sleep as a whole, break it down and then start tweaking what’s not working.
Then, when I started looking at other areas of life I soon realised than we can do this with almost every area of our life.
If you think about it we are a system of habits. Most of our life is made up of things we do every day, day in day out and it doesn’t change much. This might make us humans sound dull and uninteresting but it’s a good thing really as it keeps our lives together, it keeps us from feeling stressed as we know pretty much what we are going to be doing this time next week, we know where we will be celebrating Christmas, we know when we are going on holiday, we know when we are going to work, when we sit down for dinner, when we have to study and the list goes on. So, because we are going to live our lives like this wouldn’t it make sense to make it the best system we could and make things run smoothly and even make it work for us, and make it better.
The systems in our lives
One of the first things to do is look at every system in your life just now and assess it. The simple way to assess it is just give it a mark out of 10, nothing fancy, a quick, intuitive mark which tells you how well you think that particular part of life is going. Look at some of the systems below, add some of your own and give them a mark out of 10:
Health
Career
Marriage
Relationship with children
Money
Life Goals
Friends
Sleep
Diet
Spirituality
Fun
I will give you an example of the various systems in your life and how they can be scored:
As you can see from above, it gives us a visual representation of the different systems in our life that could need tweaking. From the example above the person’s diet is not going so great, so it would be time to look at their diet and figure out why they only scored it a 6 out of 10. And that would be the next part; to drill down on the system and find the sub-systems in order to tweak it as much as possible.
Looking at the subsystems
Once we recognise that something isn’t quite right with one of the systems in our life we can then drill down on it to find out why it’s not working and aim to look at fixing it.
From the example above you can ask a lot of questions about the system of your diet and look at each different sub-system and start to tweak it. It would be a matter of testing and tweaking until you get that particular system of your life just right, and keep on tweaking it until it is near perfect.
Of course there could be two or three sub-systems that work hand in hand to affect the overall harmony of the whole system. So you might think your diet is not that great and you keep putting on a few pounds no matter how little you eat, but it could be you’re eating late at night and hardly anything during the day. This means that your body is storing fat during the day as it thinks you’re not eating enough and you’re releasing fat at night, but not as much due to your expending less energy when you are sleeping.
Looking at all your sub-systems
When you start to look at all the systems of your life in turn and drill down on them and look at the sub-systems you can really get a handle on the things that you need to do to improve your overall life.
This is just a brief overview of looking at the systems in your life and I hope it makes sense and is useful in your life.
I would also recommend a great book for further reading on this called Work The System by Sam Carpenter
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Hi Steven,
Great post! Assessing systems in our day to day life is must. We rush through life so much that we forget to keep a track on our life systems. Always keep testing to know what is working and what is not, until you get the desired results.
Vandana recently posted..Oh God Why Is She So Insecure Part – II
Hi Vandana. I think always assessing and tweaking is a great way to keep pushing ourselves and making our lives better.
So true, Steven. Taking up residency on planet Earth treats you to several rich domains of life. Learn to chunk your life down so you become master of these domains, and the world is no longer too much for you. Mastering your system enables us to make surprising discoveries about our unlimited nature.
Ho Rob, wise words as usual. Why not invest the time to get to know our lives whilst we are here for a few years.
Hi Steven,
I like this tweaking the systems in life. No matter how organized one’s life is, it’ll still become cluttered and this serves as a good guide to access and tweak our life’s system regularly.
Great tips! Thanks for sharing.
Alex Yong recently posted..Turn Off The Television
Hi Alex, thanks for your thoughts on this, glad you liked it.
Hi Steven,
Awesome post. I think what also enables people to adequately assess their systems is self-awareness. You have to own up to what is happening and be honest and willing to face whatever it is that needs to be worked on. At least that has been my experience.
Hope all is well!
Hi Nadia, thanks for your comments. You are absolutely right about taking ownership of your life and being honest, you can’t do this without honesty.
Steven,
Interesting post. Is this similar to the life wheel idea, where you divide your life into different parts and see how balanced you are with each part? But I like your sub-system approach, which helps finding out exactly what goes wrong.
Thanks.
Hi Harry, it is similar to the life wheel in that you give yourself a mark out of 10 for each life area, but on this you drill down deeper.
Dearest Steve,
This is truly quite amazing!! I have been trying to find ways to bring “integrity” or wholeness, peace, calm, etc. into my life right now with work being so fast paced. And as I looked at this I realized I don’t think I’ve ever seen this done like this. It would make a cool, fun “workbook” where there were several of these circle “things” and people could do one for each page. Like, diet, exercise, sleep, play, work, chores, etc. And then we could go through each one and really start to look at what we are REALLY doing and when and how, etc.
I think doing this might help me take my life from this vague intangible place that, as you say, can often be full of habits, to a place of REALLY being conscious of what I am doing!! And I’m pretty conscious, but still…. when things get going fast, it can be a bit more challenging to keep one’s head above water.
I’ve been reading your book “100 Ways to Develop Your Mind” http://www.amazon.com/100-Ways-Develop-Your-Mind/dp/1449942768/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284052401&sr=1-1-spell
How I do this is, each night before bed, I asked what is it I need to focus on tomorrow? Then I just randomly open the book to any page, without looking, and I read that page. Surprisingly I’ve not opened the same page twice. Last night it was page 60 “Work on Each Worry in Turn”.
NOW, back to this post of “Systems”, I think it would even be cool to do a circle for my worries. LOL!! Don’t you think that would even cool to do with worries?!
See I think you could do a whole totally FUN book on this with even 100 things. Like worry, diet, fear, friends, family, food, etc etc etc, and have it so people could fill in the circles to suit their life.
Okay, I know, I get going and can’t stop; I get so excited. It’s just that having those circles there makes it all more tangible. It’s no longer a vague thought in one’s head.
You are GREAT!!
And I am just hugging you! LOL!
Rob E.
Hi Robin, you’ve given me an idea here, but think I have enough on my plate just now, maybe someone else can use the workbook idea.
Thanks for reading my book, it always amazes me to think that you’re a few thousand miles away reading something I wrote and you enjoying it so much, I really appreciate you telling me how much you enjoy it.
This would be a great exercise to do with worries and you could drill down on each worry in turn, you would probably find your worry is not based on anything tangible which means you can’t really change it.
Thank you as always Robin, you’re an inspiration.
This is pretty cool Steve. Happy to be following my friend Robin.
Your first visual representation with one large circle at the center, “Your life,” and smaller circles that surround that nucleus, and your invitation to ‘grade’ how we are doing in these (and other) smaller circles has got me thinking.
We will do best at tweaking these different systems in our life, I believe, if we have a stable base, that is a serene center in ourselves. When we have a serene center we have a lot going for us. One thing is that we aren’t arrogant anymore, and if we see one of these systems needs work (maybe a friend lets us know!) it doesn’t get us all upset. We don’t get defensisve, in other words, which just throws all our systems out of whack.
We don’t get discouraged either. Our base is secure, and we are free do whatever we need to do to keep our various systems working in the best way possible.
I was chuckling as I read your post. For a long, long time I didn’t know what “fun” was. I really didn’t. It was more than just a British “stiff upper lip.” I was stiff as a clam. I lived in a shell from which I would peak out furtively at the outside world…
Then one day something wonderful happened. I began to actually feel that stillness at the core of my being I’ve been talking about, and immediately — the grade in the “fun” circle that had been at zero started shooting up.
It’s remarkable how much fun life can be… Thanks Steve for a most original piece.
Christopher Foster recently posted..How Robin Easton found freedom in the Australian Rainforest
Hi Chris. Thanks for your input on this and adding to the conversation.
I hear what you’re saying about having a serene centre and I think this system helps you to find that.
I am glad you found your ‘fun’ Chris, life is not the same without it.
You nailed it, Steven.
-sam
Hi Sam, you snuck in there like a little ninja.
I am still reading your book, even though you sent it back last year, it has been on my shelf winking at me for ages and I am enjoying it immensely. It’s great to see you giving real life examples of what you are talking about in Work the System. I would urge anybody reading this to buy Sam’s book as it goes into more detail and gives great examples of what i am talking about above.
Thanks for posting a comment Sam, I appreciate it.
I really appreciate the visual mind map of the life systems. It gives an easy way to get a handle on what otherwise might seem an overwhelming mass of personal reality! I can see how it would be easy to get in the habit of glancing at the chart regularly to get a feel for whether all systems are go.
The key point for me is the fact that when one system doesn’t work it affects the others. Therefor, having an early warning system in place really does help!
Sandra Lee recently posted..Buddhist teacher warns of impending environmental catastrophe
Hi Sandra, I think you nailed the important piece here in that if one of the subsystems doesn’t work it has the potential to damage the whole system.
This is a really excellent post, Steven! It’s very timely too as I’ve been spending a great deal of time looking at my life, my goals, my schedule, etc. and everything that you say is so true.
I’ve had a real mental block in one area of my life and it has thrown everything off balance. I’ve been avoiding that area of my life where I have had the mental block and I’ve over focused some other areas. I finally faced the block and was able to push through and find the solution.
My life feels so much more balanced and relaxed now. It’s amazing what one little tweak can accomplish!
Also I love your diagrams, thank you for sharing those as well! They really help bring out the essence of the post.
Stacy recently posted..A Fun Way to Avoid Proctrastination
Hi Stacy, thanks for you comments i really appreciate them.
I am glad you found a solution to your block, and facing it head on is great advice for anybody to do. Thanks again.
Steve,
Recently I’ve been thinking about diet and health, so I’ve had my own version of looking at subsystems, but this is a very nicely laid out way of examining each system in our lives.
The real question is, must we focus on the wellbeing of the whole, which means that we have healthy subsystems, or do we tweak all the subsystems to benefit the whole, but not really sure if the specifics of the subsystem will inadvertently effect the other subsystems in a bad way?
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Hi Mathieu. That’s the beauty of this system approach, it can be applied to almost anything in life.
To answer your question: If you honestly feel your health is okay, then there’s no need to tweak it , however the operative word here is ‘honestly’. If you truly want to make your life better you have to be extremely honest with yourself. If you are lying on the couch, watching the TV over your beer belly, and you think your health is okay, then you’re not being honest with yourself when you answer the question “is my health okay?”. For people like you and me, we know when something is wrong, we are honest, and then we can look at the subsystems to find out what is really going on and look at ways of fixing it.
Great food for thought for someone who is looking to make changes to their lives!
Lloyd Burrell recently posted..Sauder Camber Hill Corner Desk
Thanks for your comments LLoyd, appreciate it.
Hi Steve,
This is such a fabulously useful post. I think your outline demonstrates why coaching works so well. As coaches, we help people break down the systems into manageable parts and focus on what needs tweaking. Just having an understanding of how to view your life this way makes the possibility of change less daunting. It is often so hard to see the forest for the trees, and this is a great tool for gaining perspective and fostering change. Thank you for sharing it.
Hi Barrie, thank you for your comments. I think this is a great tool for coaching and I have used versions of it to work with clients. I think having a visual representation of your life can only be a good thing for us and helps us stay focused. the other good thing about it is you can constantly use it throughout your life, tweaking all the time.
Steve,
I thoroughly enjoyed this. When taking the time to break down your life in systems and sub systems it actually makes the process of change seem a lot more achievable and less overwhelming. The visual representations are an excellent tool that I think many of your readers enjoyed. I hope this is not the last we hear of this. This was a great start. Now you have me waiting and wanting more. Fix the System! (A six part series from Steve Aitchison )
Frank recently posted..Are You Willing to Die For It
Great example of how to break apart the systems and domains of our life to examine them in a more measurable and clear way. The subsystem idea will be very useful. It’s interesting to look at the entire world as a system, as it really is such. All of nature is a system that is working perfectly along with other natural systems. When we incorporate systems that aren’t so natural into the mix, it can begin to disrupt what would be otherwise in perfect order. It’s really very intriguing. Thanks for the post!
Hi Steven,
Interesting post, and totally agree with you about looking at each individual part of our life. Just as aspects of our lives can be broken down and tweeked to better ourselves, so can our goals. This makes your goals more achievable and your life more manageable.
kenny recently posted..TIME FOR A KICK UP THE BACKSIDE ! Stop Making Excuses and Make The Right Decision
Steven, love this post. I remember reading a similar concept from Celestine Chua. This is also an exercise I work with my therapy clients on to help them form goals consistent with their truest desires. And finally, it’s a really helpful way to look back over the past year when planning for the upcoming year.
In addition, when I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed with vague ideas of needing to get more accomplished, I review each ‘domain’ and make sure I am doing at least one important activity in each ‘domain.’
Steve-Personal Success Factors recently posted..See How Easily You Can Out-Think Your Competition
This is so critical as we always concentrate on one aspect more than the other. however I find that looking at 10 things becomes overwhelming so I break it into 3 parts and always try to improve equally one piece of each part
Health= Sleep, Diet, Exercise, Fun, Spirituality
Business= Career, Money, financial goals, money management, job, learning
Family= Family relationships, marriage, kids, friends, colleagues, animals
for example, right now my focus is on Sleep, learning techniques to enhance my knowledge for my job and connecting with my family in El Salvador. I find that a little at a time helps my life to be more balanced
Great post Steven!
Alejandro “The Fittest Vegan” recently posted..Visual Impact AKA Body Transformation 101 The Results
The assessment of our lives comes from stepping our ourselves and opening our mind to our misguided mindset. Once we open to gates to change and are serious about being better people. Our live change for the better. But the road t triumph is harder than it looks. But you can make it. I have faith.
A great post, indeed! Steven, you nailed it well. Somehow, giving us visual aids on the the various systems of one’s life made it much simpler to understand. It would be truly helpful for those who just chanced upon this specific concern or your website. But for us who reads regularly and works in the same niche, it’s an eye-opener that we need to have new approaches as well. Thanks, Steve! I learned much as others did. Keep working!
arina nikitina recently posted..Edmund Hillary- The Man Who Conquered Mt Everest
A very interesting post Steven, and i would suggest most people do not clarify their goals and aspirations properly, as they are so tied up with everyday living.
It is when we dont tweak the numerous areas of our lives, that we end up becoming stale, blaming everything around us as being at fault, when just a simple change in our thinking and general attitude is all that is required to get back on track. One of my favourite things, is to have, and to express verbally, an attitude of gratitude for all parts of my life, and to be thankful with what I have. Best Self Help