How To Achieve Your Goals With Systems Thinking

Goal-setting as we know it is broken.

If you’re like me, you've likely set some goals for this year, and now that we’re past the halfway point, I hope you’ve reviewed and measured your progress so far.

Some goals may be on track.

Others need some more work.

Then there are the few that you had no business writing down in the first place.

And this makes you feel terrible, especially if they are important goals for you.

You can’t help but feel like you’re failing because you haven’t achieved them yet.

And that’s the thing.

Why do you feel like a failure if you haven’t achieved the goal yet?

You gave yourself the whole year, right?

So it’s not over until the end.

Unfortunately, it can feel like it’s too late to change the narrative of feeling like a failure.

It’s 8 months into the year, and you’ve either made progress or not.

This is also the point when most people stop celebrating small wins and progress.

It becomes a harmful narrative of,

“Unless I’ve achieved the goal, I’m failing.”

This leaves you operating from a state of failure, which won’t turn into success.

(As within, as without.)

So in this state of failure, you wait to arrive, to feel successful.

Maybe you take action, but then you think, “I don’t have enough motivation or willpower.”

And in a mental state like that, you won’t feel driven to take action.

This is what led to my realisation.

That the problem isn’t willpower or motivation.

The problem isn’t the goals you chose.

The problem is the way we think about goals.

And unless we change the way we think about goals, we’ll keep falling into the same pitfalls when it comes to goal achievement.

This led me to think back on times in my life when I achieved goals with ease.

When I took action without friction or resistance.

When progress was inevitable and compounding.

When I didn’t rely on willpower, hard work or a cheap hack.

What was different wasn’t the goal itself.

It was that I had a system to achieve the goal.

Why Traditional Goal-Setting Fails

Most people don’t fail because they set the wrong goals.

They fail because they approach goals with the wrong thinking.

Traditional goal-setting is outcome-focused.

It fixates on the result — lose 10kg, make $10K/month, hit 100K followers, write a best-selling book.

You define a goal, you get motivated, and you write it down.

And for a few days or weeks, you’re on fire. You wake up earlier, work harder, and get inspired.

But then it fades.

Why?

Because traditional goal-setting assumes that knowing what you want is enough to get what you want.

Just because you set a goal, that doesn’t mean you’ll achieve this.

Goals are snapshots of the future. They give you direction for where your life could go.

Goals are very emotionally driven. They make you feel good now and about your future.

But clarity of a goal is not the same as having it.

You can feel good about what you want in the future and where you might end up, but that doesn’t change where you are.

And if you do take it a step further and begin working towards the goals, even more pitfalls emerge.

You begin to measure success only by the achievement of the goal, so until you achieve the goal, you’re failing.

You project your happiness and fulfilment to something THERE, but never HERE, where you are. And sure, for some people, the feelings of being dissatisfied with their current life can push them to take action, but you’re always taking action from a negative state, which filters your perception.

This alteration in your perception changes your focus to focusing on more things to feel dissatisfied, instead of the things that align with your goals.

You could also begin to become so attached to the goal that you project your self-worth onto it. Never feeling good enough about who you are now, or feeling good about where you are. Now, you’ll only feel good enough when you achieve your goal, if you can get past not feeling good enough to achieve it.

So when you have a long-term goal and take action towards it, no matter what you do, the feedback you get that is not the achievement of the goal will be negative.

Sure, you will have positive feedback here and there, but if it’s not the goal itself — if you’re stuck in traditional goal-setting thinking — you won’t be satisfied.

And you could even achieve the goal, but it ends up feeling like an anti-climax. Then you’re already onto the next goal, in hopes of finally getting the feeling you want.

These compound to create a vicious cycle, where:

The harder you chase the goal, the more pressure you create… and the further away it starts to feel.

Or you achieve a goal, only to feel unfulfilled and chase another goal, in hopes that you’ll finally feel satisfied.

Goal-setting is not hard by any means; millions of people do it.

What’s hard is achieving the goal.

But this doesn’t mean you need to change your goals to make them more attainable.

You don’t need better goals.

You need better systems.

The Systems Thinking Shift

If goals define what you want…

Systems define how you achieve them.

Where traditional goal-setting looks at the destination…

Systems thinking zooms out to look at the environment, behaviours, inputs, and feedback loops that drive your outcomes.

Two things that make goals and systems different:

1. Goals are emotionally driven.

You feel inspired and energised thinking about them. But systems are execution driven. You learn to take action and get things done, even if you aren’t feeling the best.

Systems get you results over time, and they don’t always feel good today, but you don’t achieve your goals based on how good you feel; you achieve your goals by the actions you take.

1. Goals give you direction towards the outcome.

Systems are the vehicles for getting to the outcome. It’s not about how badly you want your goal or thinking about it over and over. You can have the most desire for your goal, but that won’t make it a reality.

What makes it a reality is having the systems in place that lead to you taking action towards the goals.

So why don’t we think in systems more?

Well, we were never taught to.

We were taught to think of intentions, actions, tasks and isolated events. Everything is fragmented.

The problem with this is that intentions don’t turn into reality.

Isolated tasks and actions don’t turn into results.

None of these turn into the results that make your goals a reality.

You could take it a step further and turn all of these into some kind of plan, but again, plans don’t turn into results on their own.

Most plans that people set don’t account for the ebbs and flows of life. They are too rigid and break when something happens.

• If you’re too tired

• If your account shuts down

• If your mom needs you to pick her up

• If traffic is taking longer than expected

• If your emotions and head are all over

• If you get overwhelmed with personal responsibilities

• If the meeting goes on 15 minutes longer, or the person doesn’t show up

Life happens, and if you have a plan that isn’t privy, your goals and intentions won’t become reality.

But this is where thinking in systems flips the script.

Thinking in systems is how you regain control and freedom, so you don’t feel like you’re constantly stuck on a hamster wheel of being busy but not making progress.

Thinking in systems is about reducing your reliance on willpower and motivation.

As you create processes that work and flow seamlessly, instead of doing 10 things that feel disjointed and random in the hopes that it gets you to your desired result.

These processes are designed so that they automatically, consistently and predictably lead to your desired results.

As you figure these processes out, you can chain them together to lead to a system.

Systems thinking asks a different question:

Instead of asking:

“How do I achieve this goal?”

You ask:

“What system would make this goal inevitable?”

“What process would lead to this outcome on repeat?”

“How can I account for these obstacles and challenges?”

“What would it look like if success became my default mode?”

This shift is powerful — because it removes friction from follow-through.

Let’s look at a few examples:

• Goal: Write a best-selling book

  → System: 1-hour writing session every weekday morning at 9 am in a distraction-free space

• Goal: Get in shape

  → System: 3x/week strength training with a coach + weekly meal prep on Sundays

• Goal: Grow an audience

  → System: Publish 3 short-form posts + 1 long-form piece every week, with a content pipeline and repurposing workflow

• Goal: Earn $10K/month

  → System: Weekly client outreach, one core offer, monthly sales review, and a lead-tracking pipeline.

When your systems are built to support the goal you’re working towards, progress becomes inevitable.

Why Systems Work When Done Right: The Principles of Systems Thinking

But most people misunderstand what a system is.

They think it’s a set of habits or a shiny new app. It’s not.

A system is a living, breathing process that’s designed to make results repeatable, predictable and consistent.

To build a system that truly works (especially under pressure or on your worst days), you have to think like a systems builder.

Here are 4 core principles of systems thinking to anchor that mindset:

Principle 1: Think Holistically — Plan for Reality, Not Idealism

Most people plan based on how they hope things will go.

Systems thinkers plan based on how things usually go. They think about possible obstacles, unexpected situations, and life happening as it does.

Instead of your thinking ending at:

“I’ll wake up at 5 am and write for 2 hours…”

You think ahead:

“What happens if I wake up late?”

“If I can’t write in the morning, when else can I write?”

“If I have a hectic week, what’s the bare minimum I can do?”

You zoom out. You account for obstacles, energy dips, unpredictability, and patterns from your past attempts.

Instead of letting things happen to you, you create ‘contingencies’ that help you stay on track. Even on your worst days, which will happen.

You’re not just designing the system to achieve the goal. You’re designing the system to factor in everything that could affect the achievement of the goal.

And if this is a goal you’ve worked towards in the past, you can use the past to prepare even better.

Look at what you did in the past and what didn’t work.

How did you respond to a specific obstacle or challenge, and how could you respond differently this time?

You want to account for all the obstacles, barriers and challenges that will inevitably come up. This way, you can have an effective and adaptive system.

Principle 2: Build for Repeatability — Not Just Results, but Reliability

A great system isn’t just one that works once. You want it to work over and over again and still get you consistent results. This is repeatability.

You want your system to be easy to repeat and to consistently (or as close to consistently as possible) get you predictable results. The key to building your system is that it works and is still effective on your worst days.

You can determine this by asking yourself:

“Does this rely on motivation, discipline, or a ‘good day’ to function?”

If yes, your system still has too much friction. And you need to go back to the drawing board to remove it.

Your aim isn’t perfection.

It’s predictability.

You want there to be as little friction as possible.

So that even if you feel off, tired, or distracted, the system still nudges you forward.

This principle pairs with the first.

You cycle between zooming out (seeing the full picture) and zooming in (tightening for reliability) until the system fits your life like a glove and you can do it over and over again.

Yes, it will get boring, but at least you’re getting results.

Something to keep in mind:

If a system is not specific, it’s not repeatable, and if it’s not repeatable, it won’t be predictable or scalable.

You want to think of 3 things when you think of a repeatable system:

1. A trigger

2. A process

3. A way to track it

Understand that your brain is constantly processing millions of information per second. And to avoid being bombarded or shutting down, it has a filtering system that blocks out anything that isn’t relevant or important to you.

So, unless you make your trigger obvious and simple, you won’t follow through on the system.

A trigger could be a prompt, making what you need for the system readily accessible or just very obvious to you.

The process is the series of steps you’ll follow to complete the system (we’ll touch more on this in the next principle).

Having a way to track your system and its output is a powerful way to keep you on track while also telling you what works and what doesn’t. However, not all systems will have outputs you can track. This is when your intuition and subjectivity will come in.

For example, I have a mindfulness system (sort of).

Now, I can track how many minutes I meditated or if I journaled today, but those don’t always tell me if the system is working, i.e. am I calmer or more peaceful?

This is when I have to assess how I feel and how I interpret that. This is where you’ll take a more qualitative approach rather than a quantitative one.

How many minutes I meditated or how many pages I journaled doesn’t translate well to how peaceful or calm I feel, so I have to assess this for myself.

The same could be for a system in your relationships. You can’t really track the quality of your relationships objectively, but you can subjectively and use that as a way to gauge how well the system works.

Principle 3: One Problem At A Time — Not All At Once

When you’re building out a system, you aren’t building one flawless process.

You’re starting with a destination and the problems that get in the way of where you are and where you want to end up.

When building systems, you’re working through a series of problems to solve. It’s not one problem and one solution.

One solution might become a problem in another area.

Your first solution won’t be perfect. But because it isn’t perfect, it doesn’t mean there’s no solution.

Your role is to look for the combination of solutions until they work synergistically with one another.

What will come from this principle of identifying problems to solve and solutions to try out is discomfort.

But discomfort is a good sign because it highlights a change being made. You’re going against what you usually do.

And because of that, you are creating change, which will create different results.

This discomfort is the kind of discomfort that moves you towards your goal; it’s not discomfort for the sake of discomfort.

The benefit of this discomfort is that you are becoming better and stretching your capacity and potential.

You are becoming more equipt at handling challenges, and you are becoming more adaptable.

You learn to make contingencies.

You learn how to take action more easily.

You learn to move away from rigidity and relying on things such as discipline and willpower.

You are becoming a systems builder.

Principle 4: Tighten Loose Screws — Fix the Root, Not the Symptom

When something doesn’t work, most people slap a band-aid on the problem: a quick fix, a new productivity hack, a new app.

A temporary solution.

Your first system will be full of them. That’s okay.

But systems thinkers don’t settle for short-term solutions that hide deeper issues.

They ask:

Your poor sleep won’t be fixed with melatonin, but a proper night routine could help.

Constant engagement won’t grow the audience you want, but improving your messaging might.

Yes, long-term fixes take time.

Yes, they’re more uncomfortable upfront.

But, as we spoke about already, discomfort is not a problem — it’s a sign you’re breaking old patterns and building something better.

The reason we want to remove band-aid solutions is that they were never long-term solutions to begin with.

They will lead to inefficiencies and more problems down the line, which could break down the entire system.

Over time, these temporary solutions will lead to more issues, and you want to prevent that as much as you can.

Remember, you want your system to be effective even on your worst days, not when it’s convenient.

So though they provide benefits short term, you want long-term benefits and results, which will come down to a change in your habits and identity.

Both of which take time to change.

So as you get better at building your systems, you want to constantly improve and refine them. You’ll find that the more you do this, your identity will change as a by-product.

And when you have a new goal, you’ll apply these principles again, and the process of systems thinking will become more natural for you.

If you want to think of applying systems thinking to your goals, think of these 4 principles:

1. Think holistically

2. Prioritise repeatability (Build for your worst days)

3. Solve one problem at a time

4. Fix the root problem, then refine and improve

This is what makes your system sustainable. And sustainability is what makes your results inevitable.

Create Systems, Not Goals

Traditional goal-setting teaches us to aim for the mountain peak.

Systems thinking teaches us to fall in love with the climb.

You don’t need better goals.

You need systems.

Loops.

Feedback.

Environments.

Overall, a different and (better) approach to achieving your goals.

Because in the end, you don’t rise to the level of your goals.

You fall to the level of your systems.

And when your systems work for you, achieving your goals becomes inevitable.

Thank you for reading.

I hope you enjoyed it.

See you in the next one.

— Shana