When the System Stops Working

The systems and habits approach to improvement is a great way to incorporate structure and habit in your life to help you become happy and successful.

By developing processes and routines and then following them, we can control the steps we take. Instead of relying on willpower, we rely on automatic behavior responses.

Sometimes, after developing a solid process for something, the system starts to produce inadequate results. While this is rare, rethinking the system is the only way to improve.

Most of the time this isn’t the case. Most of the time the new system helps improve but then settle out after a bit. Following the system might not produce the same percentage increase in outcome, but it still provides consistent value.

But other times, the outputs get worse. You still follow the same system, but suddenly it doesn’t seem to work.

If we abandon our current systems, it could accelerate the deterioration. We can quickly feel stuck. Keep working the systems and keep getting worse or stop the systems and feel the impacts of a downward spiral, moving faster towards destruction.

This is one of the most difficult times to use the systems and habits approach to improvement. But it also provides you with an incredible blueprint.

It might seem that the blueprint to follow is to do what you already put in place. But the blueprint that you should follow is the one that built the system in the first place.

This requires a new system. But we can’t just call it quits with the current system or we fall faster.

Instead, we must find small tweaks to the system. We should keep doing what have done but step it up a bit.

Keep finding ways to improve the current system. This could mean throwing out aspects that are no longer benefiting you. It could be that there are additional steps that you now should take that before were insignificant.

It can be very difficult to keep going through this transition. All the hard work that was done to get you to the level of success, now seems not to be enough.

When we have given so much to get to the level of success we reach and then start losing that level of success it is frustrating. We feel as though it was all for nothing. But it wasn’t. We learned a great deal about building the right systems and implementing them in our life.

Now it is time to use that knowledge to move forward. It means being open to learning more. There are additional steps and additional pieces of information that are now required.

Keep following the systems and habits approach to improvement to move beyond this frustrating time and rethink the current systems.

Throw them out if you need to but don’t just ignore everything in favor for new. Find better ways to do things. Find ways to improve the steps you are taking.

Whatever you do, don’t give up. Keep moving forward and building the life you desire. You may need a small pivot or a giant pivot but don’t forget that the system is what is powerful and work to improve those systems.