This week, I want to talk to you about adaptation. Specifically, the willingness and permission to do so.
It’s so funny to me when I ask people what their productivity “system”looks like. If they think they have one (and remember most people just don’t recognize that their systems are systems) they usually preface it with a shamefaced, “Well, I sorta do a [Brand Name System] but I don’t do it right… I skip X and I also do Y.”
It always looks like they expect me to scold them for having the effrontery to pick and choose between the things that work for them!
If this sounds like something you’d say, I urge you to rethink this position. You CAN and SHOULD discard, refine, adapt, dismantle, tinker, reassemble, and augment any and every system until it fits you like a broken in shoe.
Let me give an example from real life.
Many years ago, some neighbours of ours build their own house. First, they decided on an uninspired rectangular footprint and foundation. The walls went up, the roof went on. The windows and doors went in. The house became functional as a shelter, the bare basics of electricity and plumbing. And then my neighbours built some wall frames, and they move them around. For months.
In case you’re not familiar with frame construction, interior walls have a piece of wood on top and on the bottom, and then 2 x 4 studs going vertically between them. Like so: IIIII . When the walls are in their final location they get nailed to the floor and the rafters, but until that happens, you can put them wherever you want!
Testing and Reworking is The Magic Sauce
So Jo and Larry, my neighbours, invested several months just fiddling with the interior proportions of a house they would live in for the next twenty years.
Now, I didn’t live there, but I think they did a good job. The house felt open, airy, and full of light, with easy flow between kitchen, dining room, and living room. Although I’m sure it wasn’t particularly enjoyable living in an unfinished shell for several months, I’ll bet they enjoyed the space much more than if they had put it together exactly how the predesigned plans went.
And, I don’t think they could’ve done it without the hours of experiments, shoving walls from one place to another. It’s one thing to envision how you’ll use something — it’s another to set up a mockup so that you can actually try it.
But everybody wants to get through the messy, imperfect stages and get to the magazine-worthy ending. Sadly, that’s not how it works.
The more you give yourself permission to adapt, the better your systems will suit you and the less resistance you’ll have to using them– In the same way that a truly beautiful and functional home is a pleasure to spend time in.
Adaptation Takes (Elapsed) Time
So. How do we adapt systems?
The answer isn’t that complicated. And, you probably already do it. You just need to take more ownership in the process.
It just comes from paying attention to how your naturally inclined to go about things, and, if the system doesn’t support that, figure out how to tweak it so that it does.
This is applicable to times and places where you use tools and processes that someone else designed. Software is a big player here. But it might also be processes like how you cultivate, create, and edit content for your blog. Then you download something like Coschedule’s “How to Systemize Your Content” because you want to improve the process — but following their instructions makes your whole system topsy-turvy. Test, experiment, then ruthlessly discard with not working.
Another contender for things to adapt is using other people’s frameworks. Some people are productivity junkies and the waste a ton of time converting from a GTD style Next Action-based productivity system to a Kanban-style system to a Silicone Valley sprint-based system. On one hand, you cannot know if these concepts will work well for you if you don’t tried them. But don’t try to shoehorn yourself into them because it’s supposed to be the latest and greatest thing.
The changes themselves are perfect examples of 1% improvements— decide what to test, then set it up to try. The bulk of the “time spent” is actually time spent USING the new system and figuring out whether the changes were good ones.
But what happens is that people get burnt out on changes. After the fifth or sixth tweak they think, “I’ll never make this work!”
The problem isn’t with the changes, it’s with the expectations. They think it should just work right out of the box. So when they do the changes, they’re frustrated by the need. But if instead you’re thinking, “I’m going to make a series of changes that will make this system better and better for my needs,” you’re going to enjoy the process more, and you’re going to make better decisions about what to tweak.
Everybody wants to get through the messy, imperfect stages and get to the magazine-worthy ending. Sadly, that’s not how it works.
The more you give yourself permission to adapt, the better your systems will suit you and the less resistance you’ll have to using them– In the same way that a truly beautiful and functional home is a pleasure to spend time in.
Next Week:
We’re going to put together the final piece of the puzzle — the mindset of the Master Practitioner of Cumulative Effects.
See if you can make sure this comes out as a serif font, because without the cross-frames it loses its usefulness as an illustrative device.