How to live a deeper life, even in my early 20s.
Planning for success when you are still figuring it out.
Hi all! Welcome to this week’s Scallion Pancake!
If you want to set goals but can’t commit, want to be great but don’t know where to start, or feel FOMO when you hear about people professing “I want to become a founder!” from all corners of social media, this week’s Scallion Pancake is for you.
I sympathize. I want to be more than what I am and create something greater than myself. But at this stage, that greatness is still a glorious unknown; I’m still searching for my North Star and my “goals”. So until then, how can I stay on the right track?
Follow along my train of thoughts on this dilemma; James Clear and Cal Newport will join us along the way.
Scroll to the bottom for the bottom line (pun intended) because this piece is a bit ramble-y.
If you’ve been even slightly exposed to the productivity universe - the world of Ali Abdaal, Cal Newport, Lavendaire, Rowena Tsai, Andrew Huberman, etc. etc. - you’ve probably heard of the concept of setting systems instead of goals to achieve your… well, goals.
A concept introduced in James Clear’s iconic book, Atomic Habits, setting up systems is like laying out the path to your goals. By setting systems you commit to making consistent incremental progress, increasing your likelihood of actually achieving the goals.
“The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day. In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, ‘The score takes care of itself.’ The same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.”
- James Clear, Atomic Habits
He gives an example of this in practice, where for a coach, the goal might be to win a championship. Then, the coach’s system would be how team practices are held, how new players are recruited, or how the coach supervises the assistant coaches.
While goal-setting can be important in providing direction in life, according to Clear, it has 4 fatal flaws:
Winners and losers have the same goals.
Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.
Goals restrict your happiness.
Goals are at odds with long-term progress.
It seems like setting systems extend the life of a goal. Instead of achieving a goal like earning a medal or trophy, setting systems feels like aiming to become a particular type of person, like absorbing/embodying the goal to make it part of yourself.
It’s similar to something I see often in intuitive eating, where instead of having an endless list of things you can’t eat, you just tell yourself that you are healthy, and gradually you’ll adopt the eating habits of a healthy person because you identify as one.
I’ve been thinking a lot about these systems recently, especially as I’m adapting to my new environment. I have some daily practices that serve like systems, providing me with mental clarity and keeping me grounded.
Such as:
Moving my body daily (gym & stretching)
Journaling (before bed to brain + feeling dump)
Not being a lazy bum and actually double-cleansing my face
Reading a bit every day (could even just be a Wikipedia page about Thalidomide)
While these are the small habits that I’ve adopted that help me feel more stable, I’m now at a stage where I’d like to link these to a greater system or goal that I can reference. I want it to go beyond “it makes me feel grounded”. Perhaps a goal like “become successful” but in a more constructive, risa font.
To be quite frank, this is the part that I’ve been struggling with a lot. While setting a goal like, “become an entrepreneur” feels like a generic dream that strays from my personal purpose, a goal like “I want to be great” also feels too nebulous for it to be a goal; I’d use it more for a creed or mantra.
So what do you do when you don’t have a goal or vision for yourself yet?
I recently started listening to Cal Newport’s podcasts, and in episode 252 of Deep Questions with Cal Newport, he spoke about the concept of the deep life stack, a stack/process/procedure that comes before planning a deeper, more meaningful life. His point is that, even before making changes to your life to make it more meaningful, you need to start with the basic layers first.
Start with internalizing discipline,
then adopt code/routines/rituals,
then regain agency and control of your life,
then start planning.
In Cal’s eyes, many attempt drastic changes even when there’s no stable base or mental clarity to plan those great goals. How are you going to make life-changing decisions when you’re frazzled and overwhelmed?
So in my context, although I’ve been feeling the pressure to set constructive goals to build my systems around (find north stars basically), maybe I have to start with the lowest layer of the stack first, discipline. Start with the daily habits that set me up for mental clarity and stability, draw patterns to certain values that I want to embody, and then eventually link them to goals that I can reference to.
It’s not tried and tested yet, so I’ll keep you posted on the progress; I’m expecting it to take around six months. But I hope it works. Sometimes I feel like a loser for not having a specific one-liner goal on who I want to become, but hopefully, these small habits will point me in the right direction to have a clearer vision for myself.
Cornell Note conclusion of this article:
Setting systems is an important component of achieving goals
But what do you do when your goals are still ambiguous?
Start from the bottom of the deep life stack: instill discipline by showing up to good habits
Connect good habits to values that you want to embody
Feel in control of your life, gain momentum, and then start thinking and plotting goals
By then you’ll have goals supported by systems that support your goals.
A Template you can use↓
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Thanks for reading, stay tuned for more bits and bobs on the intricacies of life as a 20-something-year-old (now) working professional!