Pen{g}sieve Vol. 10: Build your system, then success becomes inevitable

“Why do people not getting better at something despite working very hard for a long time?”

— How to get better at the things you care about, Ted Talk

Watching the Ted Talk, I realized that I had stopped growing on my previous job way before the event that shocked my career in the summer of 2019. I stopped growing because I was too busy getting things done and barely had any time to invest in my system.

Why do people stagnate in their careers?

While my career did not look plateauing from the outside, I felt the strain inside from the ever-increasing demands of my job. I was like an overloaded cellphone, running many shining new apps on the same old operating system and hardware. My system was not ready for the next level. I was burnt out.

Changing from directly going after an outcome to patiently building up the system that generates the outcome is a powerful mind shift for me. I got a taste of the latter when I prepared for the interviews last year. The company I was interviewing had a rigorous process. With much to prepare in a short time, I decided to boost my learning ability. I signed up for two online courses — Learning How to Learn on subject-area learning techniques (e.g., the Pomodoro method) and Learning Ritual on experiential learning techniques (e.g., decision logs). It was the first time in a long while that I invested in improving a meta-skill like the ability to learn. And it paid off. I never expected that twenty years after school, I was able to learn much more effectively by taking some training courses.

It is the fundamental skills, stupid!

Why had I not invested in improving learning skills until then? Because I always considered learning, like eating or walking, to be a skill acquired once and staying the same forever. I never believed that fundamental skills needed to be improved. I was always after new skills.

The eureka moment came one day — I realized that it is the fundamental skills that propel one up to the next level or hold one back down. The realization unlocks a new world for me. I started to pay attention to the smallest fundamental skills that could help me get a little bit better at what I was doing at the moment. I called it upgrading my fundamental skill map.

For the past six months, I focused on two fundamental skills — active listening and conversation — out of the necessity of transitioning to a new job. I took an online course called VIEW and deliberately practiced VIEW conversations in all my one-on-ones. Conversations are such an everyday activity in our lives; a boost in one skill fundamentally changes how I experience others and vice versa.

If people ask my secrete sauce of ramping up in the new job, I will contribute to three of my newly upgraded fundamental skills — writing, active listening, and habit design. My new job experience taught me that, while technical skills are crucial, it is often fundamental skills that set people apart.

Develop skills via the hierarchy of competency

I first encountered the hierarchy of competencies in the Building a Second Brain course in September 2020. By then, I had already experienced solid personal growth for more than a year. This picture, however, crystalized the framework of my growth — I grew by upgrading my old fundamental skills along the hierarchy of competency.

Take habit design as an example. We had all built habits in our formative years, but very few people understood the process of habit formation and deliberately apply it as a tool. In my case, I was completely ignorant of habit design (Step 1 — unconscious incompetency) throughout my adult life until I read the book Atomic Habits in 2019 (Step 2 — conscious incompetence). Then I started to practice tiny habits and build my own system for the next two years(Step 3 — conscious competence). Today habit design has become an integral part of my system. Not only did I start a newsletter to describe my system, but I also recently started a support group to help my friends build theirs (Step 4 — unconscious competence).

Reflecting on the past year, I saw much growth in several of my fundamental skills, most notably the ability to learn, writing, habit design, decision making, active listening, and conversation skills. For me, the process of improvement often starts with awareness. When the awareness becomes the intention to improve, I would learn from good resources, practice deliberately, and then share and teach others.

How do all of these have anything to do with success? Success is the outcome of our system (plus a bit of luck). And our system consists of our habits, fundamental skills, and beliefs. If you feel that success at the next level is out of reach, it is probably because your system is not yet operating at the next level. Be patient and build the system, then success becomes inevitable.