The Power of a Living System
How I Tore Apart Productivity Approaches and Found What Works for Me
Dear friends,
While on holiday, I reflected on the idea of a single day as a reflection of one’s life.
I quickly realized that it’s impossible to fit everything into a single day.
Equally, I'd accomplish nothing if I only pursued what I wanted once a month.
This reflection reminded me of a shift I made two years ago: viewing the week as the most important unit of life—not just because it allows you to touch on everything that matters, but because it’s a unit you can replicate.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll share how embracing each week as a living system has radically transformed how I work, rest, and live—and how this approach can do the same for you.
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's…
William Blake
1) What Is a Perfect Week for You?
This question prompts an immediate response, but I find it helpful to frame it around three key elements:
Values
Ambitions
Priorities
The idea is to touch on everything that matters to you within a week, viewing it as a single, replicable unit.
This perspective ensures that your week reflects the life you want to lead while recognizing that it’s a living system—flexible and evolving rather than striving for unattainable perfection.
Many in the productivity world advocate for rigid systems as the backbone of life.
However, I’ve found these methods too inflexible, especially as someone who is freelance and in the arts, where my conditions are constantly shifting.
For example, "time-blocking" doesn’t work for me because it’s difficult to lock in specific tasks at fixed times.
However, understanding what those blocks are and being mindful of them allows me to create a new, adaptable pattern each week.
Like lego.
Embracing the week as a flexible living system has allowed me to adapt, grow, and move forward in ways uniquely suited to my life.
What is a perfect week for you?
2) A Living System is a Scaffold
When I began to view my week not as an abstract cycle but as a living system, both my productivity and happiness improved.
Anyone who is freelance, building a business, or working in the creative arts knows these two feelings all too well:
The first is Monday arriving, leaving you wondering how to tackle all the weekend dreams.
The second is Friday rolling around, with little sense of having made any real progress.
You counteract these two challenges by harnessing the power of a living system.
It serves as a scaffold that you build over the abstraction of your week.
The longer I’ve approached my week this way, the less I’ve needed lists or To-Do’s.
Instead, my week is guided by a living purpose, expressed through the internalization of this living system.
3) Become More Conscious About Your Week
One of the challenges of building a project is that progress often appears invisible, and improvement difficult to track.
You go to the gym but see no noticeable results, or practice a skill only to end the week feeling more tired, making more mistakes, and wondering if you're going backward.
The reality is that results are sometimes hard to see and often require hours, weeks, or months of invisible effort before they become evident.
Now the power of a living system - that is knowing the individual units that you will construct your week from, shifts your focus from outcomes to the process itself.
You start to see progress not just in what you achieve but also in how you approach the same challenges from a new vantage point every week.
A living system is more than just a practical tool; it becomes a belief system.
By consistently repeating actions that matter to you week after week, you build a living structure that gradually shapes and improves your life.
4) A System Is Something Living, Not Fixed—Like an Engine
When you picture your week as a living system rather than something fixed, you start to see it as organic and alive—something that can be tended to, improved, and nurtured.
Many productivity experts push rigid, one-size-fits-all systems that don’t fit your life, just to make a quick buck. But a living system requires you to learn what works for you:
how your body functions
what your mind needs to feel nourished
Your challenge is to notice your life, be conscious of it - and to test, experiment, and adapt along the way.
When something doesn’t work, it’s not a failure but an opportunity to refine your system.
5) The Challenge of Outside Conditions
One of the most frustrating challenges we face is when our habits and goals are compromised by external conditions.
Work gets overwhelming, commitments pile up, energy wanes, and suddenly we have no time or energy for the things we set out to do.
We wonder why we are so busy, and yet still, our lives don’t seem to move forward.
The power of a living system is that it clarifies what is non-negotiable in your life.
Instead of letting outside conditions dictate your priorities, you protect what matters.
By being conscious of your weekly system, you learn to say “no” to distractions and “yes” to what is essential.
Life will inevitably try to overwhelm you, but the strength of a living system is that it keeps you in control—not the external conditions.
6) Embrace Mistakes: Falling Forward with Purpose
One of the ways I view my system as a living entity is by incorporating adaptation at its core.
You’ll attempt things that don’t work, and sometimes even things that should work won’t deliver the expected results.
For me, it’s been helpful to tie my sense of progression not to the outcome but to the process. For example, two years ago I started learning my favourite piano piece, “Saman” by Olafur Arnalds.
It was way beyond anything I could play.
If you had watched me on any given day, you would have heard nothing but someone failing consistently at the piano.
Then, while on holiday, something clicked, and I could finally start playing this beautiful piece from start to finish.
If at any point I had given in to the feeling of “failure,” I would never have made this unlikely progression—playing a complex piece after starting piano at the age of 41.
My system allowed me to fall forward with purpose.
Rather than falling backwards and giving up.
A healthy amount of “failure” in your week shows you’re not just getting into the game of life but that you’re having the guts to learn new things.
Do not underestimate where that will take you.
Or, more importantly, how it makes you feel!
7) Systems vs Goals
One of the most significant psychological benefits I’ve experienced since developing a living system has been recognising the illusion of a single day.
Like many, I used to torment myself if I hadn’t managed to spend at least a few hours on a project.
The problem with this mindset is that you’re always living in a state of potential failure.
Whenever you don’t reach your daily goal, it feels like you’ve failed.
This psychological burden is the primary reason we give up on our projects—rather than the time we “lost” by not keeping up with our absurd goal.
It helps to differentiate between systems and goals:
A goal would be doing something 2 hours a day.
A system is simply making sure you do it every single day.
A goal is fragile in nature - a system is robust.
The difference is that a goal views life in terms of a single day, creating constant pressure.
A system, on the other hand, considers life as a whole, with the confidence that even 5 minutes keeps your project alive and a living reality.
Thank you for reading everyone!
If you’d like to read the final two components of my living system, please consider subscribing.
Much love and see you next week,
Jim
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