2017年4月读第一遍，2023年6月回顾本书，并整理读书笔记。 同时作为英文读物增加词汇量。
作者是《呆伯特》系列漫画的作者，介绍了自己的生活和工作流程，阐述了自己对成功的看法。这一部分读书笔记包括chapter 5和6，核心是system。
作者阐述对system vs goal的理解：goals are for losers，system is the key；然后介绍自己的经历，如何聚焦system，寻找怎样的system。
辩证法：过程和结果，系统和目标。
system-oriented 的人强调流程、过程、系统、习惯，即what you do regularly，goal-oriented 的人强调结果、目标；前者能更好的maintain personal energy（结合之前说的passion is bullshit, energy is good)，因为每天的action都能带来成就感；
比如跑马拉松，前者聚焦脚下的每一步、当下的配速、呼吸是否均匀，保持特定的状态；后者聚焦于42km后的冲刺。 【但你也不能说谁好谁坏，之前还有一个新闻，有的运动员踩点路线，每几公里设定一个冲刺点，这是goals的细化】
比如希望瘦身的人，聚焦于目标比如减掉10斤肉， 强调system的人则要做得是健康饮食或每天运动10min；
The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. 找工作、减肥、跑马拉松，都可以用system/goal来分析。
A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.
工作中，目标放在长远的better job上，基于此指导日常工作，哪些重要哪些不重要，积累knowhow，训练skill重要，琐碎杂事不重要；
system和上一部分的energy的关系：
chapter 6: goals versus systems
Note: The goal of job is to find a better job. donot find a new job be necessary, but already prepare for a better one. The current job is to help learn know how and establish new skills for the next job. The job-hopping is a continuous, already ongoing process. Therefore, the system is always being looking for a better job.
I asked what he did for a living and he told me he was CEO of a company that made screws. Then he offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was an ongoing process. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are the best job for you won’t become available precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for the better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job.
This was my first exposure to the idea that one should have a system instead of a goal. The system was to continually look for better options. And it worked for this businessman, as he had job-hopped from company to company, gaining experience along the way, until he became a CEO. Had he approached his career with a specific goal in mind, or perhaps specific job objectives (e.g., his boss’s job), it would have severely limited his options. But for him, the entire world was his next potential job. The new job simply had to be better than the last one and allow him to learn something useful for the next hop.
Did the businessman owe his current employer loyalty? Not in his view. The businessman didn’t invent capitalism, and he didn’t create its rules. He simply played within the rules. His employers wouldn’t have hesitated to fire him at the drop of a hat for any reason that fit their business needs. He simply followed their example
Throughout my career I’ve had my antennae up, looking for examples of people who use systems as opposed to goals. In most cases, as far as I can tell, the people who use systems do better. The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways.
To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose ten pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. That feeling wears on you. In time, it becomes heavy and uncomfortable. It might even drive you out of the game.
All I’m suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as very different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.
The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system.
For our purposes, let’s say a goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.
For our purposes, let’s agree that goals are a reach-it-and-be-done situation, whereas a system is something you do on a regular basis with a reasonable expectation that doing so will get you to a better place in your life. Systems have no deadlines, and on any given day you probably can’t tell if they’re moving you in the right direction.
My proposition is that if you study people who succeed, you will see that most of them follow systems, not goals. When goal-oriented people succeed in big ways, it makes news, and it makes an interesting story. That gives you a distorted view of how often goal-driven people succeed.
The minimum requirement of a system is that a reasonable person expects it to work more often than not. Buying lottery tickets is not a system no matter how regularly you do it. （成功机会机会渺茫的system不是好的system，比如成为奥运冠军，比如每天买彩票期待总有一天中大奖）
Warren Buffett’s system for investing involves buying undervalued companies and holding them forever, or at least until something major changes. That system (which I have grossly oversimplified) has been a winner for decades. Compare that with individual investors who buy a stock because they expect it to go up 20 percent in the coming year; that’s a goal, not a system. And not surprisingly, individual investors generally experience worse returns than the market average.
2022-9-12 听阅
Chapter 7: my system
Content:The growing life in a small town and did not know which job is suitable for the author. Got sone advice from a kid in his classroom, and apply economic major in the college. Found not suitable for sales, lawyers, and decide to run a system for his success.
The system is to find a creative job and the work can be reproduced easily.
To find that, first learn the economy in the banking system, and try lot of work (failed a lot but always focus within the system).
This was one of those times when the difference between wishing and deciding mattered. I didn’t wish to stay in school; I decided. For the next two weeks I stayed in a bed in the college infirmary, struggling to stay awake long enough to read my textbooks and keep up to where I assumed the class would be. Upon release, I discovered I was actually a month ahead in some of my classes. My grades climbed back where they needed to be and I marched on.
I had ignored my father’s advice to work for the Postal Service. That turned out to be a good idea. I got into college without much help from my guidance counselor, and I stayed in school against my doctor’s advice. This was about the time that my opinion of experts, and authority figures in general, began a steady descent that continues to this day.
I decided that my talents would be best suited for creating and running some sort of company. To acquire the necessary skills I would complete my economics degree and get an entry-level job at a big bank. I would take as many company-paid training classes as I could and learn all there was to know about business from a banking perspective. I also hoped to complete my MBA at night on the company’s dime. I was agnostic about what specific sort of business I would someday run. All I knew for sure is that I needed to be ready when the time was right.
This brings me to my system. I still have the diary I wrote when I graduated from Hartwick, in which I outlined my entrepreneurial plan. The idea was to create something that had value and—this next part is the key— I wanted the product to be something that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. I didn’t want to sell my time, at least not directly, because that model has an upward limit.
I figured my competitive edge was creativity. I would try one thing after another until something creative struck a chord with the public. Then I would reproduce it like crazy. In the near term it would mean one failure after another. In the long term I was creating a situation that would allow luck to find me.
It helps a great deal to have at least a general strategy and some degree of focus. The world offers so many alternatives that you need a quick filter to eliminate some options and pay attention to others. Whatever your plan, focus is always important.
My system of creating something the public wants and reproducing it in large quantities nearly guaranteed a string of failures. By design, all of my efforts were long shots. Had I been goal oriented instead of system oriented, I imagine I would have given up after the first several failures. It would have felt like banging my head against a brick wall. But being systems oriented, I felt myself growing more capable every day, no matter the fate of the project I happened to be working on.
2023-9-13