March 25, 2025
Last time, we talked about owning your defaults — ditching the prepackaged settings and workflows designed for some mythical "average user" and replacing them with something that actually fits your brain. But here’s the thing: even when you do that, your systems will still break.
Not because you’re lazy. Not because you’re undisciplined. But because workflows aren’t perfect from the start. They need debugging, just like any piece of software.
Most people think a failed system means they failed. That’s nonsense. It just means something about your environment, your habits, or your expectations wasn’t quite right. Instead of scrapping everything and flailing around for a new miracle system, do what a good engineer would do:
Most people fail because they throw the whole system away and start over from scratch, over and over, without ever learning what actually worked. Stop doing that.
A lot of systems work in theory. But theory-you is focused, disciplined, and never gets distracted. Real-you is tired by 3 PM and sometimes wants a sandwich more than productivity.
📌 Fix it: Build around your actual habits, not your fantasy self. If you never check your agenda in the morning, stop pretending you will. Instead, put the most urgent task where you’ll see it first — sticky note, phone lock screen, whatever works.
A system can be technically perfect and still suck to use. If one part of it feels annoying, slow, or inconvenient, you’ll start avoiding it. And once you start skipping it, the whole thing crumbles.
📌 Fix it: Identify the one piece of your workflow that causes the most resistance. Change just that. Move a button, automate a step, simplify a template. That one tweak could make everything else fall into place.
If your system isn’t telling you when it’s failing, you won’t fix it. You’ll just assume you’re bad at it and quit.
📌 Fix it: Make failures visible. Track skipped tasks, abandoned notes, or ignored reminders. If you keep ignoring something, that’s a system failure, not a personal one. Adjust accordingly.
I’m going to say it again, because **this is where everyone screws up.**
When your system isn’t working, you will be tempted to:
DO NOT DO THIS.
Instead:
This is how real improvement happens. Not through massive overhauls, but through tiny, intentional tweaks that add up over time.
For the last 15 months, my wife and I have been renovating her grandmother's 70-year-old, ancestral home. It's a chore, and the checklist changes from month to month. But we pushed for things that made the biggest difference. First, we got the kitchen and bathroom working (not necessarily finished, but working reliably). Then we moved in, so that we see everything that's still unfinished every day, just walking around. We've now understood the maxim, "Renovations are never finished; you just stop somewhere."
Workflows are the same way. Your workflow isn’t broken, it’s just unfinished, and to some extent, it always will be. Debug it as needed.