Systems vs. Goals

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 Happy Monday!


Whew! Last week was tough for me. For some reason I could not find my groove and was feeling demotivated. I was sloppy, emotional, had little to no energy. I felt like the quarantine finally caught up on me. Yes, there were crying spells too.

What did I do?

I allowed myself a week to loosen up.

I bought myself two bags of chips that I consumed little by little throughout the week. I also bought a REGULAR coke in case of emergency. Proud to say it remains unconsumed. 💪

I was still waking up early (body clock) but I could not get out of bed earlier than 9am. I sat down in front of my computer as usual staring at it most of the time and not making any progress on the online courses I enrolled in. I clicked forward anyway. I might just catch something that will pique my interest. I spent all extra hours browsing youtube and fb for random videos.

So i felt I was just throwing to waste a whole week.

Not until I snapped out of my despondent mood did I realize that that was not exactly what happened.

Ok, no judgments please. It's silly but while I was feeling lethargic, these happened last week:

I blogged on Monday, attended 2 tourism related meetings, made 1 video for my regular Friday post, did a webinar yesterday and slipped in a praise song to my youtube channel to end on a high note, literally.

I just realized my dallying was only obvious to me and me alone. How did that happen?

Systems vs.Goals

I encountered this first in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.

In a nutshell goals are the results you want to achieve. Systems are the processes that lead you to those results. Goals sets your direction, while systems help you make progress.

Because I do have my systems : my Happy Monday posts, our
Rise Up PH Tourism
 group, my Friday video posts that led me to an invitation to speak on a webinar yesterday; it was easy for me to be rolling as usual even if I may not be as enthusiastic as I would have been in a better mood.

Without these in place, it would be much easier to just cross out last week and be unproductive.

Let me highlight one thing though. Throughout that week, I THOUGHT I was giving myself a break. Think about that. I did not feel forced or unable to give myself the respite that I needed. That's what systems are for.

You are able to attend the essentials because they are part of your, well, system.

Although it takes time to set these systems up, it's all worth it because you can rely on them in times when you really need them.

I'll talk about how you too can create these systems on #ForwardFriday. See you!

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