Success Is Hard Until You Start Building Systems Like This

If you want to completely dominate your goals, you have to be what I call a systematic thinker.

This means looking at the entire world as a series of interconnected webs.

Systems within systems. All interacting with each other.

What Is A System?

Systems aren’t easy. They’re complex which is why you need to study how they work.

Knowing how and why something works is how you make adjustments and personalisation’s for yourself.

If you want to change the things that are outside of you:

The government
Corporations
How a work environment functions
YOUR LIFE

Then you need to undersatnd systems.

This even applies to the goals that you set for yourself. No one just sets a goal for no reason.

A goal is meant to be out of reach.

It’s why most people don’t reach their goals and only a few do.

Because they don’t question:

How do I accomplish my goals?
How do I go about having a big impact on the world?

The answer is that you do it only by learning systems.

That’s one of the biggest reason to be a systematic thinker. To make a meaningful positive impact in the world.

What is impact?

Impact is change.

To accomplish your goals or create real change, you’re going to be changing some kind of system to do that.

Leaders.

Visionaries.

Designers.

Architects.

Artists.

Their lives and careers revolve around making meaningful impact in the world.

It’s also important to note that all systems have a purpose and a function. Understanding the purpose or function determines the general behaviour of what the system is doing.

The most common purpose and function of all systems is to protect itself. It is highly ordered, but at the same time very chaotic and difficult to predict.

Think about corporations, governments, and cities.

See it from a larger perspective.

These systems exhibit very similar characteristics to a living creature or cell.

When you poke it, it will run away, exhibit fear, get angry or lash out at you, get defensive, or ultimately protect itself.

Believe it or not, languages are a system.

They are highly ordered and structured. Its purpose is to be evolutionary and to shift.

It’s the reason why when we read Shakespeare, we don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

Think about how the English language has evolved over the past 500 years, and not only that, but also how the larger language of humanity has evolved over the past 2000 years.

No system is designed by one person sitting from the outside. It’s not that one-man invented language. It’s self-made and self-organising.

What isn’t a system?

Scattered parts aren’t a system. Rocks on the ground aren’t a system. They don’t interconnect in an interesting meaningful way.

Books on a bookshelf aren’t a system.

There’s no meaningful relationship.

Examples of systems include:

The rainforest
A human body
An aquarium
A city or a country
A sport
A corporation (big or small)
An economy
A currency
A university
A car
Militaries
The public education
Instagram
Churches and mosques
Your business.

We spoke on the one-person business in the previous article where I outlined a 7-day plan to get started. That’s a system.

This article and my entire social media is a system.

I basically am a one-man show. I do most of the stuff with no employees.

A creator who produces his own work online isn’t just a simple influencer.

It’s a very complicating system.

I don’t just make videos.

I write
I record
I manage my website
I manage any backend stuff
I manage backup drives
I work via several computers

There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes.

The self is a system.

Your physical body has numerous systems. a digestive system, an immune system, and so on.

But your self-image is also a system.

Your memory, beliefs, they’re all a part of the self.

It’s easier to think of it as the universe as one big system and everything within it is a sub-system.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article. Systems within systems. They can overlap in complicating ways.

Most of the big wordly problems are all systematic problems.

Persistent Worldly Systematic Problems

Think about problems that have xisted for thousands of years. They’re not easy to step out of because it’s not human beings that are the problem, but the system that’s creating those problems.

Think about poverty.

How long have people tried to eradicate poverty? But it’s still here. It’s a persistent systematic problem.

The shrinking middle class. Every single country has had it since the beginning of human civilisation.

The environment, global warming, pollution. These aren’t new. Environmental problems have existed since cities were first formed 1000 years ago. It obviously wasn’t global warming back then, but it was something else. Maybe disease found in water pipes?

Drug addiction is another one. It has existed for thousands of years.

War, obesity, crime, marketing.

Marketing is an interesting one.

Have you realised how difficult it is to market high consciousness activities and so easy to market low consciousness activities?

Unemployment, education, depression. We have a depression epidemic. Why is that? It’s a systematic problem. Something in our society is creating it.

These are, if you’ve noticed, very difficult problem to solve**.**

You can’t solve most big problems because there’s a larger system behind it that we aren’t aware of.

Do you see the significance of systems?

The main aim is to understand big problems without a meaningless judgment.

Most people just sit on their couch screaming at the telly:

“These wars are stupid!”
“He’s a corrupt person”
“Crime is silly”
“Ee have such bad unemployment numbers!”.

But you can’t just sit on your couch and point fingers.

What most people should do is question their lack of understanding.

Where are those problems coming from?
What is creating them?
Which forces are at play?

Once you understand the system itself, then you have a slight chance of changing it.

The same goes for you.

If you really want to change your life (now we’re stepping into personal development), then go internal.

Have a think about your own internal systems.

Your beliefs are a system of its own.

What are your beliefs?

Let’s now discuss the principles and values of systematic thinking so that we can use them to our advantage and drive success in our own personal and professional lives.

The 12 Principles Of Systematic Thinking

Problems Are Systematic, Not Personal

This is very broad thinking.

It’s not one person or thousands of people creating problems, it’s poorly designed systems that are creating those problems.

So, if you’re not where you want to be and are casting blame at other people or calling things evil, ask yourself why you’re doing it.

What is the larger system creating this?

For example, people who use drugs aren’t evil. We know this. Some of them can be, but not all of them.

Their drug addicts due to the environment, bad education, easy availability of drugs, the media serving such low conscious entertainment.

People don’t have anything higher to aspire to.

For those who are addicted to drugs, there’s nothing better to do than drugs.

This tells us one thing. Problems are a lot more complicated than we think. But it is a great principle and very relieving to acknowledge that problems are systematic, not personal.

Everything Is A System

I want you to be extremely conscious and self-aware. Everything around you, or most things around you, are a system.

For the next 3 days, regardless if you’re at home, walking down the street, at your workplace, working on your side hustle, or even working out.

I want you to identify and spot out systems.

You don’t have to do this your entire life, but it can be a phase.

Become very self-aware of every single system around you.

This is not a step-by-step guide. So just take whatever I say as a principle of systematic thinking.

Non-linearity.

The really interesting things in life are not a simple equation with a few variables. They have hundreds and thousands of variables that affect each other.

If you think about it, the game of monopoly is linear. We know the rules. It’s easy.

Now, what would be tricky is if one of the rules in Monopoly was that we could change the rules. This makes it tricky.

Now, the strategy can’t be relying on the rules. If rules can change, that makes things unpredictable.

The “system” can now take dramatic turns and Suprise you.

That’s what systems are. Systems are counterintuitive. You can’t just say “I will do this to get that”. There are many factors affecting it.

Naïve people who don’t understand a system and decide to muck around with it get the opposite of what they want.

Then they’re stuck facing the consequences.

One chaotic system is the weather. It’s unpredictable when we try predicting it too far into the future. It can also surprise you. You can’t predict beyond 10 days. We can still predict it reasonably well just a long as we understand the limits of our predictions.

Non-linearity also means that just because you have good intentions to change a system, that really doesn’t mean anything.

People who have good intentions but are simple minded get the opposite effect.

They create evil rather than good. It’s why good people actually create evil.

They assume their good intentions are enough, but you have to understand what you’re doing.

You have to study the system.

Local Actions Have Global Impact

This one applies to business. When you do business, you can’t just think of your company. That’s not systematic thinking.

Your company itself is an element within a larger system.

The global economy.

The industry that your company is a part of.

You need to understand that your actions don’t just affect your company.

Your business affects the industry, citizens all over the world, employment rates, taxes, currency, public opinion.

You have to take all of this into account. If not, you will fail in the long run.

The world is becoming more global by the day. Start thinking more globally. How you or what you’re doing fits into the larger system that it is a part of.

Broaden your scope.

This means having global concern rather than local tribal concern.

Simple minded people are tribal. Systematic thinking is anti-tribal.

It’s a global concern over the entire species.

Seeing everything as the same.

Being sustainable.

The Dangers Of Self-Interest

You have to be careful of serving your own self-interests blindly without self-reflection.

Think of an evil person that you know, then question who created them. Really contemplate on their upbringing, family history, business environment etc.

Systematic thinkers include everyone in their solutions, otherwise it’s not a sustainable system.

Become Conscious Of Backfiring Mechanisms.

A lot of the times, if you change something in a system, it will backfire on you. The system is its own greatest enemy.

You need counterintuitive solutions to fix counterintuitive problems.

This applies to everything from education, how companies are run, marketing, economies, taxation, healthcare etc.

The funny thing is, the more you study systematic thinking, the more you will realise that we are our own greatest enemy.

That’s what personal development is.

It’s realising,

“I am my worst enemy.”

In systematic thinking, there are no easy solutions. Violent disruptive change to a complex system is going create even more disaster, not fix it.

So, don’t overreact to systematic problems.

It’s all about balance and harmony.

It relies on both positive and negative emotions.

Intuition And Whole ism Versus Reductionism.

We see these a lot of these problems in universities. A lot of scientifically minded, logical, rational people over analyse everything and reduce it down to physics. Only focusing on the materialistic gross elements and ignoring all the interesting relationships which really as we know now, define the behaviour of those systems.

Whole ism is seeing everything as a whole, not just parts.

For example, it’s not just looking at your brain as one single part (for example, the prefrontal cortex), but a very complex system.

Being aware of false boundaries.

In reality, there are no fixed boundaries in the universe. Everything is subjective. We as humans get to decide where we draw boundaries.

This is an important power.

How we draw boundaries determines what we’re going to see and what potential solutions we come up with.

Redrawing boundaries can give you solutions you didn’t have before.

This means to change your perspective.

If your worldview doesn’t serve you, try looking at things differently.

The world is dynamic, not static.

Simple minded people think of the world as static.

“This is my car"
“This is my house”
“This is my country”
“This is my language”
“This is my body”
“This is my beliefs”

The world is static to the naïve. To the systematic thinker, most things are morphing and evolving.

My body is evolving.

My car is actually devolving.

It’s deteriorating every single day.

The government and country is changing.

The population is increasing.

The world itself is evolving.

Beliefs and ideologies are changing.

Your job, marketplace, and industry (AI!) is evolving.

Don’t have a fixed static mindset in a dynamic complicated world.

Most of the time, you won’t get the results you want because you aren’t reflecting reality.

Going back to the language analogy, every single year the dictionary publishes a new word.

Value Complexity, Nuance, Wisdom, And Learning.

Don’t oversimplify everything because not everything is just black and white.

Systematic thinkers value wisdom and lifelong learning. They understand that systems are complex.

You need ongoing learning otherwise you will stay stuck.

Also, don’t try to manipulate systems. Try to understand them. That’s where you solutions lies.

Invest a lot of time in just understanding systems.

A lot of people will look at you like a mad scientist. But that’s often how average people view extremely successful people.

Have a strong interest in learning. There’s so much more to learn.

Take Preventative Action Rather Than Fixing Problems Once They Arise

This means being forward-looking. Seeing things from a long-time horizon.

For those who own a business:

It’s not just about the next quarters profits, but sustaining the company to grow, thrive, and change the marketplace 10-20 years down the line.

It’s expecting unforeseen consequences of your actions.

If you own a company, that’s going to affect not only you but your employees.

But not only that, the entire industry.

Understanding systems, how one thing affects another makes you humble. You understand every little touch can become a huge thing.

Understanding and mastering systems isn’t just about achieving your goals.

It’s about admitting the unknown.

It’s realising you really don’t know anything.

You’re probably not a simple minded person if you’re reading this, but you generally laugh at simple minded people who say, “I know everything!”

Self-reflection is extremely important. System thinkers need to self-reflect.

Raising your consciousness will solve a lot of the problems you have in your life.

How can you solve your own problems when you can’t even reflect inside of yourself and see what your own structural problems are?

Search for the root cause of problems rather than the superficial aspects.

Dig deep.

Everything generally revolves around fear and emotional stuff, but what’s the root cause?

Study Patterns And Cycles

And finally.

If your work Is not solving meaningful world problems, you will get eliminated. You won’t be successful.

Before I finish , I want to show you what success looks in business, content, and marketing from a systems point of view.

Systematic Thinking In Business, Content, And Marketing

The first correct step is to identify the main purpose or functions. For most businesses, that would be marketing, sales, operations, and finance.

After you’ve identified the main purpose or functions, list out every task in those functions.

Then write down the goal of each task. But more importantly, the end goal.

What is the true purpose of each task/goal?

For example, do you create content for followers? If you do, that’s not sustainable. There’s no purpose. You should create content to generate leads.

Now, this raises questions.

Where are you sending your followers?
What’s the end goal?

Every task within a system should have a very clear goal.

For example, newsletters don’t come before creating content because there’s no point of a newsletter if you don’t have an email list. So, content comes before a newsletter.

For each task, write down the steps you have to follow to complete that task.

Quick shameless plug. If you are an online creator and you want guidance on how to systemise content, there’s a link below:

Grab it for free: https://stan.store/SerkanKozkiran/p/cbf

Back to it.

I want you to think of this business system as a pipe. The goal is the smooth flow of water through the pipe. When things feel stuck, progress feels slow, leads are inconsistent, sales are sloppy, or the performance is unpredictable, it’s because a part of that pipe system is blocked.

Seeing your business in the eye of this water pipe analogy is extremely useful.

The pipe has different sections:

Marketing
Sales
Operations
Finance.

At the start of the pipe, the water is leads and at the end of the pipe it is profit.

Your marketing is the tap.

This is important.

Your marketing essentially controls how much water (quantity) flows through the pipe (system).

For profit, you need clients.

To get clients you need sales.

To get sales you need leads.

And to get leads you need marketing.

So, the more marketing (the more you open the tap to let water flow through), the more potential leads (clients) you get entering the system.

But here’s the thing, marketing doesn’t matter if you have 10 blockages.

Most people try fixing all blockages at once.

But when you try fixing everything, nothing gets fixed.

So, the goal is to fix one main blockage.

This will feel like you’re moving slower, I get that.

But if you try fixing everything at once it feels fast until you realise you’re never actually solving anything.

By going slow, you actually move fast.

To scale, that’s simple. Just turn up your marketing.

But clear the pipe first then turn up the tap. Only once the system can handle it.

Don’t pour water into a broken pipe.

That’s all from me for this week.

Thanks for reading!

-Serkan

Oh and by the way, here’s a video of this article: Success Is Hard Until You Start Building Systems Like This