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[Insert Relevant Dilbert Comic]

I just finished reading Scott Adam’s How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. It’s a book that runs us through the life of the creator of Dilbert, and examines how he has consistently failed and still consistently come out on top. Be it getting diagnosed with variants of the same unbeatable disease multiple times, and kicking its ass, or hopping from job to job when further progress at one seemed futile, Adams has a positive attitude and a technique to his drive that are both astounding. Add in a sense of humour and you’re in for hours of hilarious and yet productive literature.

But I’m not here to recommend his book (although I wholeheartedly do).

I’m here to talk about the biggest takeaway from this book.

Goals are for losers. Systems are for people who succeed.

It’s as simple as that. The people who succeed aren’t the ones who set massive goals like building the best company in the world, or becoming a famous musician. They’re the ones who arrange a system that might eventually get them there, that’ll be easier to follow through on, and that will benefit them more in the long run, than a goal they feel they’re always failing to meet.

Let me give you an example. This semester, I started waking up at 5 AM to go to the gym. Let me clarify — I wake up at 5 AM, walk around incoherently for an hour, and go to the gym at 6 AM. It was the easiest thing in the world… because I was jet lagged.

It got a lot harder in my second or third week. I was barely convincing myself to get out. The muscles I had been promised were not showing, and on worse days of school, I was up till 1 AM, making a 5 AM rise time absolute torture. I fixed it with a single trick. I switched from being a goals person to a systems person.

Now being a systems person is just establishing a simple practice and following through with it. Instead of setting my goal to ‘GET RIPPED’, my goal became ‘go to the gym tomorrow’. And I just implement that goal every day. You get a high when you accomplish a goal, so just make your goals achievable, but still rewarding. I made waking up a goal. I made going to the gym a goal. I made cooking a healthy breakfast a goal. I made studying before class a goal. It might trivialize the idea of goals if you’re accomplishing them on a daily basis, but trust me, you get a lot more done.

That’s what Scott Adams has to say — implement a system and start thinking in terms of the daily and the short term. A single gym trip at 6 AM isn’t too bad. It just so happens that you’re doing it tomorrow, and the day after that, and the one after that.

Goals are for losers. Everything sucks until you achieve it, and then the time the high sticks around for barely compares to the time it sucked for.

Be a systems person. Accomplish a tonne of goals every day, and a few months from now when you see a semi-nude version of me walking around and shamelessly putting my muscles on public display, you’ll realize it works.

Takeaways is TCO Labs’ segment in which we try to tell you the best thing we learnt from something or the other. Stick around. We’ve got a lot more where this came from. And feel free to follow us on Facebook and Twitter while you’re waiting.