Principle · chapter 05, Systems
What you reach for when you are tired is the system
Putting things in order can be a way of regulating anxiety, and you recognise it by the asymmetry: building the system brings relief immediately, and using it never happens. If after a weekend spent rebuilding a tool you feel calm, but on Monday you do not open it, that was not a system; it was a soothing activity.
So test your system in the worst week, not the best. What you reach for when you are tired is the system. The rest is decoration.
A system does not mean more tools, more tables, more process. A well-made system is usually one page and one recurring reminder: a trigger, a procedure someone else could follow, one owner, and a proof that it has worked. Without the proof you have hope, not a system.
Try this for one week
Write out everything that came back at least three times in the last quarter. Take only the item with the highest cost and write one page: what sets it off, the steps, who owns it, and the trace by which you will know it worked. Use it every time the trigger appears this week, and cross out one step at the end.
What this does not promise
It will not make you an organised person, and it will not help with overload: at forty per cent too much work, a procedure only means you do too much more neatly.
From Modern Hermet, chapter 05: Systems. The book reads the real Hermetic texts with their dates, and offers twelve practices for an ordinary week.
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