A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the waiting room of a doctor. I had my 300-page spiral writing book with me. I was writing out some ideas for a presentation that I needed to make a few days later. A young girl sitting across asked, “Sir, what are you writing? Are you an author?” I smiled and answered, “No, I am an entrepreneur. I write because it helps keep my mind clear.” I then explained to her my writing system.
The other day, at a conference I was attending, an attendee walked up to me and said, “I noticed that in the entire room of 60 people, you were the only person making notes. How did you develop this habit?” I showed this person my notebook and how I made notes, and then explained why.
Some other questions I get regularly: Why do I still use a notebook and pen to write rather than a digital gadget? How do I blog daily, and why? How do I manage to be punctual? Why am I not on social media? Why don’t I use a calendaring tool? What is my approach to meetings? How and what do I read? What apps do I use? And so on. That is how this series came about: “my life system.”
We are creatures of habits – good and bad. Over time, the hope is that we build on what’s good and reduce the bad. I have tried to learn from books, conversations and observations to become better. I wrote about some of my beliefs and habits in my Proficorn series. As I reviewed those posts, I decided they needed an upgrade. And hence this series.
When I was in Pune for a meeting some months ago, I saw 2 formulas blazoned at the reception. 1.00 raised to 365 = 1.00. Below that: 1.01 raised to 365 = 37.78. The implication: if we can make ourselves 1% better each day, that leads to a 37 times improvement in a year. Each of us has an opportunity to create better versions of ourselves – do a kaizen on ourselves.
It is never too late to learn and improve. It requires a realisation that we can be better than we are, a humility to accept when we are wrong, and an openness to change. Every mistake we make should be introspected to see if there is change needed in our core processes. Done repeatedly, we become better. A system is a set of ideas or rules for organising something; a particular way of doing something. Apply it to our way of living and we get a life system.
This series is not about providing life hacks – the Internet is full of those. It is about sharing how I think and what I do – the path and system I have chosen to follow, after many iterations and improvements. Each of us has to craft our own life system.
