Systematic living is living your life on purpose. It is about making active decisions instead of reacting instinctively(action versus re-action). Think about how many decisions you make each day? There are many things that require a choice like, what to eat, when to go to bed, to workout or to not workout, or even what we should say or not say. Yet, many of the most important choices are made by habit or out of routine, not by a purposeful decision.
To make things worse the choices we are most likely to put on autopilot are the most basic and therefore have far reaching effects. If we do not get adequate rest, nourishment, or exercise on a regular basis our entire life will suffer the consequences. In this sense, Systematic Living could be misunderstood. It is not Automatic Living, rather it is Purposeful Living. However, I call it Systematic Living because I believe that we need a systematic way of making these kind of basic but important decisions.
Habits can be good or bad, but most often they tend towards the negative. Our eating habits are rarely naturally healthy, it is easy to “stay up” to watch the game or a favorite show (even with DVR’s). The more we rely on our habits the more they degenerate into negative results. In order to solve this problem we need a way to make decisions that will emphasize the actions that will produce the results we are after and minimize the negative. To this end I suggest a system of review where a person starts with the most basic areas of life and reviews how they do things and the results they can expect from their actions and then developing a plan of action to improve these basic areas so that every area of life can experience the benefit.
That’s what this blog is all about. More nuts and bolts ideas to follow soon. . .
Like most people I have my lazy side and have often fallen prey to the notion that with the right arrangement I could find myself on “easy street.” Easy street is a place where everything falls into place, no effort is required, and there is no worry. In religion a Deist believes that God built the world (as a man might make a watch) and then stepped back allowing things to take their own course without any guidance or involvement on His part. We often think that we can automate our lives with computer programs, devices, systems, and then sit back and enjoy the show. It is like winding a watch then sitting back and watching the watch run. The problem is eventually the watch will need to be wound up again—work! “Work,” how we hate that word, but work is all we have. Getting up in the morning requires work, eating our favorite food is work, participating in our hobbies is work, yet we think we can escape work. Another word for work might be LIFE. Systematic living is work. Sure we rest, but we are the most alive when we are engaged in some type of work and rest is only enjoyable when it is needed after working or in preparation for working. Remember my definition of work is anything we engage in that requires us to move, think, and produce a result. The myth of effortless success is that we can have success (a result) without effort (work). Systematic Living is about successful effort not effortless success!
WHITE BELT FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLE: Results come only from work, and success comes only through effort.
Why do we believe the easy street lie? One reason is often someone else has done the work for us in some area of life. While a child you experience easy street to some degree. Mom and/or Dad do much of the work for you and it seems as if you can sit back and watch the watch, but as we get older we need to take more responsibility for accomplishing our own work. Sadly many parents continue to wind the watch for their children even as they reach their 20’s, 30’s, and even 40’s.
So if you are sitting around waiting for your life to “click” into place and take off like a rocket into effortless orbit, remember life will never click and a rocket requires tremendous work to build and tremendous energy to launch. Who is doing your work?
I am a black belt. The martial arts have had a huge impact upon my life. My approach to most of life has been influenced to some degree by my training and experiences as a martial artist. As I continue to post I am sure that this subject will be a reoccurring theme, so in this post I have chosen to focus on one particular aspect of the martial arts that I believe could be of use to those of us who want to have successful effort and live on purpose. This aspect is curriculum and rank.
In the martial arts the lowest rank is white belt. Every white belt dreams of one day wearing the coveted black belt, however good black belts spend much of their time sharpening their basic white belt techniques. The difference between a white belt and a black belt can be found in the number of techniques they know, but more importantly it is also found in the precision with which they execute the basic movements. The importance of a good foundation has endless examples. Here is one example—The Eifel Tower is a beautiful and intricate structure, yet if it were built upon a sinkhole it would be reduced to ruin for lack of a good base. Likewise, a kick is useless if the person throwing that kick has no balance, base, focus, or technique. In grappling a good base is crucial to prevent being thrown to the ground by your opponent.
How does this relate to personal productivity? Simple. When we do not know where to start a project, life improvement strategy, weight loss program, or other something we purpose to do, we must remember to start with the basics. In other words quit striving for another layer of complexity and seek the very basics of what you are trying to do. Work done at the basic level is never wasted effort and will filter up to improve every level above it. Examples: Do you need a faster computer or do you need to be a faster typist? Which would improve productivity more? Would all the details about how a computer keyboard works help you in any way to complete your work?
Because I believe this principle to be true, items of interest will often be assigned a corresponding belt color and ranked in order of importance. They will be designated as white belt foundational concepts/methods or as higher rank concepts/methods that build upon the white belt foundation. I hope this helps to make the information more useful and gives those who are overwhelmed a place to begin.
Systematic Living 