Is it possible to achieve more by doing less?

How systems help run my life and stop me from spiralling into insanity.

👋🏼 Hey, I’m Anna! I’m a founder and operator in an ongoing relationship with writing. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share business, career and life lessons that I’ve learned over years of trying hard, failing often, and on occasion succeeding too.

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I used to work with a CEO whose entire house was decked out with mid century light fittings each with custom bulbs.

They were all dutifully catalogued on Excel: each fitting, the associated bulb’s shelf life, unit cost, forecasted date it would die, where to buy a replacement and purchasing lead time. If I remember correctly, prior to a lightbulb going out his assistant would receive an alert reminding her to re-order.

At the time I thought this was categorically insane. Why wouldn’t he just buy them as needed like any normal human?

But after years of working in high stress environments - in leadership roles for global brands, running my own business and working with all types of founders from solopreneurs to Series A - I now realise how brilliant this was. With a little work upfront he created a system for a repeatable task, freeing up brain space to focus on his business in the process.

Anything that’s repetitive can be systemised.

As author Ryan Holiday describes, “a system is a way to do more by doing less”. By using templates, workflows, processes and rules, it enables better results with less time and effort.

I’m a sucker for a good system and some of mine are engineered down to the tiniest detail while others involve just a single step. My to do list is a system. My daily knee rehab is a system. Managing my money - whether it’s business income or personal spending - is a system. How I capture creative ideas is a system. How I generate new work is a system. How and what I say no to is possibly my most important system of all.

Here’s how I think about it:

• If it’s a repeatable task, I can build a workflow for managing it.

• If it’s a repeatable opportunity, I can build a process for vetting it.

• If it’s a repeatable decision, I can build a framework for making it.

• If it operates on a regular cadence, I can build a schedule for running it.

Before I discovered the power of systems I didn’t really know how I prioritised my energy, tasks and time. I was constantly exhausted with no clue why. But with systems powering my life I don’t feel as drained. A lot of things are templated and automated. I spend less time faffing about and more time being creative, and I’m less stressed and happier overall.

A peek behind the curtain.

Before I share some of the ways I operate, a quick reminder that everyone approaches their tasks and time differently. Some people are big picture thinkers and others enjoy structure and process. Some love to tick a box, while a checklist makes others bolt in the opposite direction.

I sit somewhere in the middle. I’m highly process driven when I need to be but I’m loosey-goosey when it comes to the bigger picture.

A disclaimer: your brain is wired differently to mine and so your systems likely will be too.

1. My Schedule.

I used to have a meeting heavy life driven by a belief that the more I did the better I’d be. I’d cram calls into every waking moment even though it left me feeling like a shell of a human. These days I’m learning what an optimal schedule looks like, and here’s the one I’m currently playing with:

• Mondays are for deep strategic work. I have a hard no meeting rule which helps me get runs on the board as soon as the week starts.

• Tuesdays - Thursdays are for meetings and actioning to-dos.

• I schedule my weekly Substack on Thursday night.

• Fridays are for planning and tying up loose ends. In an ideal world I put my tools down mid afternoon.

• Sunday afternoons are for writing.

• Async > phone call > virtual meetings > IRL meetings (for the most part)

Do I always stick to these rules? No. Do I always try? Mostly. But sometimes I need to take a meeting on a Monday. More than once, I’ve woken up at 4am on Friday morning to finish polishing my Substack ready for an 8:30am publishing deadline. But hey, life happens. No system runs with 100% efficiency and I don’t get it right all the time.

2. My Money System.

I’m not a financial advisor, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be.

But over the last decade I’ve gone from being gainfully employed to self employed and from having a healthy salary to none. I’ve had months with no income and months with ridiculous income. The only way I’m able to live in this state of pure chaos is through my trusty money system, which allows me to save, invest and pay myself consistently regardless of how my business is going.

At a glance: all cash gets paid into my business bank and flows out to accounts for business expenses, tax, super, investments, savings, my payroll, sub-accounts for my personal bills, health expenses and clothes (gotta love a new outfit), and a joint spending and bills account with my boyfriend. This system allows me to pay myself every single fortnight, as if I have a salaried job. While it took a lot of time and tinkering to get right, it now takes me ten minutes to manage per month.

That’s when you know a system is doing its job: it runs effortlessly and fades into the background.

3. My To Do List.

Ah, the to do list. No matter how many hours you put in it never seems to reduce in size, am I right? Well last year I attempted to fix this madness, designing a task management workflow which divides and prioritises my to-dos for me. Here’s a peek into my daily dashboard:

• Daily Focus: this forces me to ruthlessly prioritise just one important task per day.

• Daily Non Negotiables: this tracks my daily habits like writing, my knee rehab and sales outreach.

• Admin Tasks: < 10 minute tasks that aren’t critical but need to get done, like returning a phone call or buying a birthday gift.

• Big Consulting Tasks: projects for my consulting clients. I use a Kanban board with templated cards and every one has an area for me to make notes. I’m a big documenter, meaning I have hundreds of bits of information I can draw on with just a click. People think I have a great memory but it’s a hack, I just write everything down.

• Big Business & Writing Tasks: things related to growing my business or freelance writing.

• Might Do: a place to dump tasks that I might do one day.

While at first glance this may appear overwhelming it massively reduces my mental clutter, acting as a second brain allowing my actual brain to focus on the things that matter.

4. My Note Taking System.

Last year I built and refined a process for noticing, capturing, organising, storing and drawing on ideas. I did a full post about this, you can read it here.

5. My Writing System.

I write for a minimum of thirty minutes every day. That’s it. That’s the system.

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While I’m yet to create a system for ordering lightbulbs I have them for most areas of my life; from networking, to outreach, sales, content creation, you name it.

Sure, they take a little time to set up, but once humming I’m able to ruthlessly focus on what matters by doing less of the mundane stuff that doesn’t.

Designing yours.

If you want to build a personal operating system, give these questions a go:

• What actions or tasks do I do every day, week, and month?

• Is there a template I could create to help optimise each one?

• Is there a system I could create to help make them more efficient?

• Is there a rule I could implement to help manage my time or energy?

If you build simple systems to manage parts of your life you’ll start seeing efficiencies and opportunities everywhere. You’ll save time; ten minutes here or one hour there. You’ll learn to focus on what’s actually important. I bet you’ll probably let go of a whole lot of stress too.

So win back time and energy and develop a system! Design your schedule, track your habits, automate your finances, prioritise your to-dos, template your tasks.

But if we’re ruthlessly prioritising here, then perhaps leave your lightbulb reordering system to another day?

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👀 How have systems helped you move ahead in life?

Let us know below in the comments.

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