“Goals are for people who care about winning once. Systems are for people who care about winning repeatedly.” 

—James Clear

James Clear eloquently highlights the power of systems, primarily focusing on habits. However, while valuable, this perspective doesn’t fully capture the expansive potential of systematic thinking in personal and professional growth. This first article in the BIRR series aims to broaden this view, presenting a more comprehensive approach to leveraging system thinking for our betterment.

Personal Preface

Like many, I experiment with various models, concepts, and methods — from popular self-help books to courses and coaching. Yet, despite these efforts, I felt stagnated, as if each method was a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. This prompted a period of introspection, leading to a pivotal realization: the need to reimagine my approach to personal development.

I discovered the significance of viewing personal growth through a probabilistic, experimental, and systematic lens. The magic wasn’t in a single intervention but in a blend of strategies, each contributing incrementally to overall growth. Every habit, action, tool, and thought forms part of an interconnected web that shapes our lives. This shift in mindset was key in transitioning from sporadic improvements to consistent, long-term development.

This insight was instrumental in creating the Personal Development System (PDS)  — a perspective that acknowledges the difficulty and demandingness of effective personal development. The PDS is a versatile, problem- and goal-agnostic system, designed to effectively adapt to a wide range of contexts. Whether your focus is on advancing professional skills, enhancing personal well-being, or smoothly navigating life’s transitions, the PDS stands ready to support you. It’s akin to a Swiss Army knife designed to eliminate the need to constantly seek new ideas or tools to manage the ever-evolving landscape of personal and professional goals and challenges. This new perspective not only enhanced my own journey but also deeply resonated with my coachees. They often express gratitude for this approach, highlighting how it has brought them clarity and measurable progress in both their personal and professional endeavors.

Combating harmful and ineffective models of personal development

If you’re reading this, it’s likely you share an interest in personal development.  Perhaps you’ve tried various methods, hopefully with some success. However, a common pitfall I’ve observed involves skepticism or disillusionment with personal development. People often recount their experiences, saying, “I tried X, Y, and Z (like tracking, journaling, therapy), but they didn’t work,” or lamenting that “the changes didn’t stick, so I don’t believe in long-term change.” When inquiring about the number of attempts or variations they’ve experimented with, the answer is typically one or two. Often, a sample size they deem sufficient to conclude that an issue can’t be solved, a class of interventions isn’t effective, or, worse, that personal development itself is futile.

This mindset stems from a fundamental misconception about the nature of personal development:

1. I have a problem (e.g., stress, imposter syndrome) or a goal (e.g., feeling less anxious, procrastinating less). 
2. I have identified an intervention (e.g., meditation) that is promoted as a way of resolving my problem or achieving my goal by a reputable individual (e.g., by Sam Harris). 
3. The practice needs to either solve my problem or help me achieve my goal. Otherwise, it doesn’t work. 

Such thinking overlooks the systemic nature of developmental processes. The PDS helps not only overcome this fundamental misconception but it offers significant benefits for anyone looking to enhance their developmental efforts.

Personal development is, indeed, systematic. Our lives comprise a complex mix of conscious practices, automatic habits, and external circumstances, all interlinked. Thinking of any one intervention in isolation from this broader context is overly simplistic. Given the specificity and constant evolution of individual contexts, our approach to development practices must be flexible, not deterministic.

Cultivating an experimental approach

To obtain a more embodied understanding of an experimental approach and resourceful mindset, I encourage at least a brief study of the famous inventor Thomas Edison. When discussing his attempts at inventing the lightbulb, he reframed his numerous trials not as failures but as successful eliminations of ineffective methods. He said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

Initially, we might lack sufficient models and intuitions to identify effective personal development interventions. However, with deliberate experimentation, we can refine our understanding of ourselves. Thankfully, unlike Edison, we don’t need thousands of trials. With ingenuity, appropriate guidance, and a systematic approach, significant growth can be achieved after testing just 3-10 changes. 

Nurturing a probabilistic and systematic mindset

It is rare and unrealistic to expect a single intervention to solve a problem or achieve a goal completely. A probabilistic mindset views development as a system of interconnected cogwheels rather than isolated wheels. Experimenting with changes in one area (e.g., morning exercise) can influence the overall system (e.g., more resourceful thinking).

A lone intervention seldom shifts success rates from 0% to 100%, such as going to bed on time, especially once the first inconsistencies appear and the initial enthusiasm weakens. However, implementing and iteratively improving three to five small interventions targeting a specific goal can significantly boost long-term success rates. Achieving 100% effectiveness may take years, but reaching about 80% behavioral consistency is feasible.

For instance, to establish a morning meditation routine, don’t rely solely on an alarm. Also, place a Post-It note at the meditation spot, reminding you of meditation’s importance, and nightly recall the benefits you’ve experienced from this practice. While each measure individually might only slightly tip the scales, collectively, they enhance the likelihood of adherence when seen as part of a systematic personal development project.

By adopting this revised model of development, greater progress is achievable due to realistic expectations and a commitment to continuous effort and a resourceful mindset.

With the foundation set, the following sections will help us move from the theory of the PDS to real-world results. You’ll learn how to conceptualize the PDS, set it up, and continue refining it for sustained personal growth.

Mapping personal development and the PDS

What is “personal development”, often also referred to as self-improvement, personal growth, or self-actualization? I view it as a life-long, never-ending journey to close the gap between the current and the most awesome you. 

So, what constitutes a “Personal Development System” (PDS)? Essentially, the PDS encompasses all components or systems that improve or aim to enhance our well-being, productivity, character, and non-technical “soft” skills.

A PDS can include numerous interrelated components, making it somewhat complex. Yet, the degree to which the PDS is deliberately designed isn’t that important. Yes! This is good news because we don’t need to start from scratch. Even if we have a rudimentary approach comprising various components (like a document listing our habits, goals, and productivity bottlenecks), we already possess a system, albeit an implicit one. The next step involves making this existing PDS explicit. In the sections below, I’ll outline the four key components (the BIG4) that form the foundation of an efficient PDS, representing your minimum viable product (MVP). Of course, your system can include additional components, which I address as the BIG4+ in later articles.

One common pitfall is overemphasizing clear distinctions between these components. Avoid getting bogged down in this aspect. As you engage with various interventions, the distinctions and boundaries between components will naturally become more apparent. For instance, tracking, journaling, and reviewing might initially seem distinct, but you may later find it more effective to consider them as a singular element. The components, whether they are habits, environmental factors, or your understanding of the PDS itself, all contribute to your personal and professional growth and thus are integral to your PDS.

Modelling variability in personal development and the PDS

Individual approaches to personal development vary along several dimensions:

1. Level of investment: This encompasses the time and resources dedicated to personal development activities, ranging from reading and attending seminars to practicing specific skills. Investment can be quantified in terms of hours or financial resources expended on a weekly or monthly basis.
2. Systemization: This refers to the extent to which individuals organize and structure their personal development efforts. It can vary from a highly detailed plan with defined goals and action steps to a more fluid, intuitive approach based on reflection and experimentation.
3. Focus areas: Personal development can cover various domains, including physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth. People may focus on one or several areas, depending on their individual preferences, interests, and needs.
4. Motivation: This is the driving force behind engagement in personal development activities. It can be influenced by internal factors like personal values and self-fulfillment or external factors such as career aspirations and social expectations.
5. Adaptability: This involves the willingness and ability to revise one’s personal development approach in light of new experiences, feedback, and self-discovery. It includes being open to change, learning from setbacks, and adjusting goals and strategies as necessary.

The effectiveness of our personal development efforts significantly depends on these variables. The PDS prompts us to reflect on our current approach and consider potential updates, thereby enhancing the overall impact of our personal development journey.

Why is a PDS beneficial?

“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results” 

 —James Clear

At its core, the PDS aims to maximize experiences we desire and minimize those we don’t. While the full appreciation of the PDS emerges from experiencing its real-world outcomes, understanding its theoretical benefits can be a powerful motivator for its implementation. 

Key benefits of a PDS:

• Explicit articulation: it compels us to clearly define our thoughts and experiences related to personal development
• Holistic and expansive thinking: encourages a more effective model of personal development.
• Resilience through probabilistic thinking: builds resilience by fostering an understanding that not every action guarantees success
• Input-output mindset: promotes a focus on the relationship between actions taken (inputs) and results achieved (outputs)
• Detail-oriented approach: emphasizes the importance of details and avoids the ‘arrival and achievement fallacy’ – the mistaken belief that reaching a goal ensures lasting happiness

Adopting a more effective model of personal development

The PDS viewpoint champions holistic (how elements interrelate) and expansive thinking (leveraging diverse elements to achieve goals). In contrast with the PDS approach, which acknowledges a broader spectrum of influences, I often see what I call the mono-growth model, where individuals focus on one specific concept, such as habit, behavior, cognition, emotion, language, trauma, environment, relationships, mental health, chemical imbalances, systems (!), or non-dual states.

Let’s explore our thinking. We might ask ourselves:

• What do you want to have more or less of in your life?
• How will you achieve that goal effectively?
• How will you implement personal development effectively?

Let’s say that what we want is more self-compassion in our lives. If our response were exclusively along the lines of “I need to establish a regular habit of self-compassion journaling,” then we would be viewing our personal development predominately through one lens—in this case, habit. We would be taking the mono-growth view. This might be due to our lack of alternative tools, a problem known as the ‘law of instrument’ or Maslow’s Hammer: “If you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” (Abraham Maslow). It refers to an over-reliance on a familiar or favourite perspective, which can result in approaching problems in ineffective or even harmful ways. We will select interventions from an impoverished menu of perspectives that will poorly impact non-nail problems. 

Taking the expansive PDS model by contrast, we could add social influence (e.g., spending more time with people who are compassionate) and environmental design (e.g., placing artwork in our room that reminds us to be compassionate with ourselves and others) to habit formation.

Applying the systems mindset to our development in this way nudges us towards the Goldilocks zone of learning (i.e., not just becoming excellent in one technique/perspective and neither shallowly proficient in 50). Moreover, we avoid solution underload (i.e., Maslow’s Hammer) because we recognize that no one element can solve our problem with 100% probability. We avoid suffering from solution overload (i.e., the paradox of choice). Using an experimental approach, we test each component to evaluate its effectiveness, and we are prepared to adjust the system accordingly.  

Without a PDS-based point of view, we may be more likely to have thoughts such as, “What positive habit could I establish next? Or, what can I do to grow myself?” Of course, a thought like that can lead to highly worthwhile ideas that can improve our lives, which would be awesome. However, recency bias and the instrument fallacy don’t make this particularly likely. Happily, we can do better with our new system-based POV! We might instead think, “Given that I underwent a great process to discover my biggest professional bottleneck, which is providing feedback to my employees in a way that improves their performance effectively, how can I modify the elements of my PDS to ensure that I do this with increasing consistency and effectiveness?” Thinking holistically and systemically about our development helps us to connect the dots: it can remind us of the synergies between different actions we take to improve ourselves and why we’re taking those actions at all. It helps connect different components under the overarching project of manifesting our most awesome version. 

Building resilience through probabilistic thinking

PDS-based POV favors probabilistic thinking (i.e., how each element is making an occurrence less or more likely). It enables us to see our development as a probability game. We implement a series of actions within our PDS to increase the likelihood that we’ll take some desired action. But none of those actions taken in isolation—or taken collectively—will guarantee that we’ll receive the desired outcome or take the desired action. 

Thinking of our development as a probability game in this way has the following advantages:

• Realism: it fosters a realistic attitude towards personal development, avoiding over-reliance on any single intervention.
• Strategic approach: encourages stacking multiple interventions to incrementally increase the likelihood of desired outcomes.
• Resilience: by anticipating potential failures, we build resilience, stay self-compassionate, and maintain motivation, even when interventions don’t yield immediate results. 

This last point is crucial and follows from being realistic. If we expect to follow through on our intentions 100% of the time, it’s much more painful when we fail to act as we wish. If, after having strung together a bunch of probabilistic interventions, we expect ourselves to succeed 80% of the time, then we expect ourselves to fail about 20% of the time. That makes it a lot less painful when it happens. And when we fail, we’re less likely to react by blaming ourselves and more likely to say to ourselves, “I have become much more consistent with this positive habit. This was just one of those 20% of times where it doesn’t work, but it still works 80% of the time, and it used to work 0% of the time, so that’s great progress.”

For example, maybe we have a phone alarm go off in the evening to remind us to meditate (as part of our evening routine). It’s tempting to think that once we set up this alarm, we will meditate—end of story. Of course, that’s not how it works in reality, and there will be times when this fails—our alarm will go off, but we’ll be glued to the phone, and we won’t get up to meditate. 

If we adopt the PDS model mindset of personal growth, we will begin by asking ourselves a probabilistic question, something like, “I’d like to make it more likely that I will meditate in the evening. What series of mutually reinforcing interventions can I deploy to achieve that?” This approach will help us to think both more creatively and realistically about our options. Perhaps it will prompt us to do a whole bunch of things, each of which might help a little. We might put up a sticky note on our wall that reminds us of why we want to meditate, set up a phone alarm, and tell a friend about our intention to meditate every evening before going to bed. Maybe each of these interventions will increase the probability of us meditating before going to bed by 20% or so.

While it may be discouraging that the best we can do is to increase the probability of success, accepting that we can’t get any guarantees, it can still be totally worth doing so! Imagine what we could become if, for the next ten years, we were 20% more likely to take a desired action, rather than procrastinating when we’re facing a choice point. Over a ten-year period, that would add up and might well amount to a qualitatively different and better life. And in many instances, we can do better than increasing the likelihood of the desired action by 20%. As for the meditation example I used, we might realistically be able to get that as high as 80-90% by applying a range of interventions instead of just one. That’s really good! So framing self-improvement as a probability game does not have to prevent us from feeling excited and motivated to keep improving.

Thinking in inputs and outputs

Traditional thinking about personal development tends to be in terms of cause and effect. Applying that view, we think of an intervention as leading inevitably to an outcome, or otherwise it has failed. The systems perspective enables and encourages us to think about personal development more in terms of inputs and outputs. The difference is that rather than one cause being linked to one effect, there are multiple inputs and multiple effects, all linked in complex ways. If we change the inputs (e.g., time, interventions), we’ll get different outputs (results). 

We might consider how changing the inputs by switching from a once-a-month to a fortnightly coaching routine might affect the outputs. By doing this, for example, will we be able to improve from acting on 20% of our good intentions to acting on 80% of them? Well, we can try it and find out.  Attempts to implement personal development interventions often fail because we devote insufficient time—less than the minimal effective dose—and are then frustrated by the lack of results. While working smart on personal growth is important, our personal growth will only flourish when we spend a sufficient amount of time on it. We need to get the balance right, and the way to do that is by experimenting with the inputs and evaluating the outputs. 

Taking details seriously

Lastly, a PDS-based POV encourages us to take details seriously and appreciate how small changes to the system can make a big positive or negative difference, especially changes that impact our daily living. For example, most people will see a significant immediate and long-term effect if they switch from asking themselves, “What am I grateful for today?” to asking a more experientially-optimized question, such as “What am I grateful for today, and why?, or to asking a completely different question, such as “How can I make my life easier and more fun tomorrow?”

Our PDS can shape a significant fraction of our day-to-day experience. Our evening journaling can set the tone for the remembering self and experiencing self for that day and for the next day, while our morning routine can set the tone and frame for the whole upcoming day. We are likely to realize that we can become significantly happier by making lots and lots of small adjustments rather than a few big ones. 

The term “arrival and achievement fallacy” refers to the illusory belief that “Once we make it, once we attain our goal or reach our destination, we will reach lasting happiness,” in the words of Tal Ben-Shahr. For instance, believing that, “Once I secure this job, I will be content,” or “Once I mend this relationship, I will find joy.” 

It’s true that work, relationships, and numerous other aspects play a role in our happiness. However, our well-being is often shaped by seemingly inconsequential daily experiences, such as the thoughts we have while grabbing lunch or our reactions to being cut off in traffic. If we have a great PDS, then it will change the details of how we perceive the world around us as well as our internal world of thoughts and emotions. In a year or two, we may find that we’ve become a significantly calmer, more productive, and happier person, whether we have “arrived and achieved” or not. 

How to build a PDS?

We discuss two broad steps in the process of developing and updating our PDS: 

1. Formulate the functions (or aims) for the PDS
2. Design the PDS accordingly

When designing any system, I recommend following the key principle, “Form Follows Function”, which is explained in this article. Consider the following sections as a case study in its application.

Functions

Step one is to brainstorm the functions (or goals/value propositions) of our PDS. There are two types of functions: object-level functions and system-level functions. 

Object-level functions are what we want to get out of the PDS or any specific component (e.g., more joy and less anxious states), while system-level functions are how we want the PDS to operate. I can’t say much about the object-level functions since they are subjective, but I can share system-level functions that have demonstrated high value for people.

Have clear and motivating functions on both levels

Not explicating the functions of our PDS leads to two modes of failure: giving up early and iterating poorly. It is important to consider that it will take time until our PDS is self-motivating (e.g., has a compelling cost-benefit ratio). During this time, it is important to regularly reconnect with the “whys” (or functions) of our PDS to maintain motivation. I encourage that we ensure that our “whys” actually resonate with us, for instance, by discovering the interventions that give us the most bang for the buck. We need to iterate the system until we find the version that is self-motivating. However, if we lack explicated functions, our iterations will have some degree of arbitrariness and directionlessness, which squanders our limited resources. 

Measure, monitor and adjust for effectiveness and cost-effectiveness

One common failure mode is to underinvest or overinvest in personal development due to an ungrounded sense of progress. This happens when we don’t adequately investigate our sense of progress. Underestimating our progress might be worse because it can cause us to abandon the whole personal development enterprise. Overestimating our progress will lead us to invest in interventions that have poor comparative cost-benefit ratios because we see them as more effective than they are. This can play out in two ways: (1) the ratio was poor from the beginning, or (2) the ratio becomes poor over time (diminishing returns). For example, a bottleneck might be our well-being, which we can decompose into different subdimensions, including a sense of gratitude. After a year of focused high-effort gratitude journaling, we might have achieved a stable high sense of gratitude.  Our PDS should help us notice that our well-being is plateauing and motivate us to find a new target (e.g., cultivating our sense of progress).

We can avoid over- or underestimation by creating a PDS that aims for an evidence-based, balanced, and continuous sense of progress. Evidence-based means that our PDS helps us evaluate our progress based on different qualitative and quantitative data sources. Continuous means that we collect data and update our views regularly. Balanced implies that many of us start with gathering data for the side we are biased against for a while (e.g., actively notice signs of progress if we naturally see more stagnation or regress and vice versa) and only aim for equal evidence after we correct our biases in noticing and interpreting data. A common failure mode on a more meta level is to not balance ‘evidence-basedness’ and ‘continuousness’ with cost-effectiveness and build an overly complex and effortful measurement, monitoring, and adjustement system. Another core function of the PDS is that it needs to be executed consistently to avoid building useless systems. More details on failure modes and solutions related to a measurement and monitoring system can be found in my tracking and character development articles.

In other words, the PDS needs to have components/forms that help us understand to what extent our current efforts are effective and cost-effective. It needs to help us answer questions, such as “what is the minimum effective dosage of self-actualizing time for me?”, by measuring and monitoring the extent to which the PDS and each component/intervention provide sufficient return on the invested time and money. For example, coaching or therapy with provider X might be the most effective use of 70% of the weekly self-actualizing budget for a year. Thereafter, another provider or intervention could become a better use of the weekly budget. Moreover, the most effective intervention could not be the most cost-effective intervention. It will depend on personal circumstances and the external world (e.g., quality-cost distribution of available service providers). Important personal variables in the case of working with a practitioner are (1) cost sensitivity, (2) the ability and motivation to self-facilitate our growth without guidance or accountability, and (3) the extent our current biggest bottlenecks benefit from service providers with a specific background (e.g., severe depression might likely better be addressed with highly-recommended therapists than coaches). The PDS needs to establish a dynamic measuring and monitoring process that helps us adapt to changes in our personal circumstances and the external world. Our journey towards personal growth needs to respect our idiosyncratic susceptibility, resources, and constraints, enabling sustainable change. 

Discover and select functions and forms wisely

Before we can measure, monitor, and adjust our functions/goals and forms/interventions regarding their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, the PDS needs to ensure that we discover and select goals and interventions wisely. The PDS needs to have components/forms that help us discover abundantly and select deliberately to avoid common failure modes. There are three basic problems: (1) unleveraged goals/functions with harmful or ineffective forms/interventions, (2) unleveraged functions with highly effective or cost-effective forms, or (3) leveraged functions with harmful or ineffective forms. For example, we might decide to work on our productivity, and the first thing that comes to mind is to improve how we prioritize our work. However, with more thoughtfulness, we would have discovered that we lose much more weekly effective work time due to procrastination than by working on non-high-priority tasks. 

A common problem is the selection of functions and forms from an impoverished option set (e.g., due to lazy, top-of-mind generation). Solutions to these problems are discussed in my article on planning and goal-setting. It helps to conceptualize personal development functions/goals on two levels: the BIG4 goals (i.e.,  productivity, well-being, character growth, non-technical skills) and all other more specific goals (e.g., increased focus for productivity or more joy for well-being). The PDS should clearly ensure that we prioritize all our development goals and interventions rather than rushing to work on the first ones that occur to us. In other words, we want our PDS to help us discover a wide range of promising goals and interventions and select the most leveraged ones. 

Ensure consistent execution

Another function that will apply to basically any PDS, regardless of personal circumstances and individual differences, is that our system has to be something we can execute consistently. It is a common failure pattern that people are very enthusiastic and ambitious when designing a system, which leads to them building something that appears promising in theory but is overly complex and effortful in practice. In this case, we’ll likely stop using it after the initial enthusiasm fades because it feels overwhelming and not worthwhile (aka poor cost-benefit ratio).

This feeling is a highly useful change signal—we need to review the system and establish a positive and motivating cost-benefit ratio. However, we commonly fall prey to the failure mode of interpreting it as a stop signal instead of an update signal. We overgeneralize to the whole class—PDS are not worth it—and abandon them altogether. Why? One explanation is our tendency to avoid things that cause us pain and disappointment (i.e., investing a lot into something that turns out not to be useful). Again, this deeper change signal is highly reasonable and functional if the right conclusion is drawn from it, namely to start with building an 80/20 version (or MVP) of any system. This will ensure a cost-benefit ratio that is stable and action-motivating. If we stop using it, we are back at square one, except for having invested our resources into creating something fancy that isn’t useful. 

If we stop using our PDS consistently, it’s likely we’ll discontinue using it. Similar to stopping bushing teeth for a week, we usually don’t immediately experience any clear negative effects. However, the negative and positive effects come from consistent usage or neglect over time. The danger is to conclude that things are still fine after a week of non-use, so there is no reason to maintain the system altogether. A robust discovery, selection, measurement, monitoring, and adaptation system should help with this challenge.

Forms

Step two is about specifying the forms that serve the functions of our PDS. In other words, we need to concretize how we will get from where we are to where we want to be. 

Create and organize the PDS and components

We need to create one page where we place all our thinking related to our PDS and more pages for the individual components. If our knowledge management system is made of folders and docs, then we can create one document for our PDS and other documents for individual components of the PDS. However, I recommend starting to use more advanced knowledge management software, such as Roam Research, Obsidian or Notion. Two useful affordances of the more advanced knowledge management software are the ability to collapse points to reduce clutter and embed the different knowledge structures into each other. When we update an individual component page, the change should be automatically applied to the more general PDS page and vice versa. 

Each page should have a clear and practical structure. Practical means it shouldn’t be overly complex, but the structure should be grounded in actual engagement with the page. I recommend placing the function at the top of each page, then the forms, and, lastly, a journal, where we capture relevant notes organized by date. Moreover, I recommend two other sections: mindsets (above functions) and experiments (below journal or within it). Mindsets related to each component are helpful reminders of meta perspectives (e.g., the initial versions of the PDS are not going to be perfect). The experiments section helps us identify, select, and evaluate personal development experiments.

Steps

1. Select and install an advanced knowledge management software (I recommend Roam Research)
2. Create a page for the PDS
3. Give the page five headings: mindset, functions, forms, journal, and experiments
4. Distill supportive mindsets from the previous sections

Specify, integrate, and evaluate functions and forms

Each component/intervention/workflow should have a separate page with these elements. Whenever we add a new component, we want to ensure that it is aligned with the functions of our PDS. Or, whenever we have an idea for a new object-level goal, we are encouraged to reprioritize our object-level goals. 

It’s valuable to occasionally consider how the functions are connected to our area-based or role-based life ontology (see the module on life ontologies for more on this). For example, as an object-level function, we could have the role of “effective philanthropist” with the mission of discovering neglected high-return philanthropic opportunities and increasing our philanthropic investment in them. It’s important to have well-rounded object-level functions that drive progress in all significant life areas of our lives. 

Example

Role-based functions

• Excited optimizer
  • Become more compassionate with myself
  • …
• Inspiring entrepreneur
  • Increase the joy at work
• Loving partner
  • Improve conflict resolution with partner
• [Other life roles]

I covered more best practices in the FFF article. In the PDS in Action section, I provide an example of the end result of the following process. 

Steps

1. Create a prioritized list of system-level functions (see the previous section on functions) and object-level functions for your PDS (e.g., it should help me become more exemplary) 
2. Brainstorm and write down all the relevant components of your current PDS
3. Create a separate component page for all of them
4. Embed the current functions of your PDS on each component page
5. Specify the system/component-specific functions and describe the current form
6. Rate how well the form is serving each function on a 1-10 scale
7. Answer why you gave a specific rating
8. Define what changes might enable a higher score in the future
9. Document the changes in the journal 
10. Implement the changes
11. Bonus: read articles on FFF and life ontologies

Find the golden ratio

Our PDS should help us discover effective and cost-effective input-output ratios. We need to qualitatively and quantitatively capture our experiments with different input-out ratios. I recommend a journal for qualitative data and a psychological tracking software for quantitative data. The software could be a spreadsheet or a mood/habit tracker. 

We should start with our best guess of the inputs (i.e., development budget) that are neither too little nor too much. I recommend the 20%-sharpening-the-saw heuristic, which suggests spending roughly 20% of our total weekly awake time on improving well-being, productivity, character and non-technical skills (i.e., ranging from 4-12 hours/week, but this is notoriously blurry since there is an overlap with professional development, e.g., doing work check-out, tracking work stuff, or defining work goals for the next week). We can deliberately go off-balance for good reasons (e.g., deadline sprint). A specific weekly upper-bound time cap prevents the failure mode of getting overly excited about personal growth and overdoing it and ending up overwhelming ourselves or trying to change so many things at once that nothing really changes. If we have consciously decided to budget 15 hours per week for self-improvement, this constraint will help us prioritize our activities. For example, it might help us realize that we only have the time and energy to work with either a coach or a therapist, not both. Or perhaps we realize that we will have to focus on either improving our social skills or planning our career for the next three months and put one on hold for at least three months. 

Steps

• Specify the input/development budget in terms of time and finances
• Define functions and the form for the journal
• Concretize functions and the form for the tracker

Start with the BIG4

We will likely cover all the system-level functions by establishing four components as a cost-effective system MVP (referred to as the BIG4). These are: 

• Expert-facilitation practice – Coaching/Therapy (or Peer Support when financially constrained): Personal guidance is crucial, and a coach or therapist can help establish and fine-tune practices related to effective personal growth.
• Prospective Practice – Planning & Goal-Setting System (P&G System): This involves developing clarity around what you want and informing your daily behaviors, cognitions, and thoughts.
• Measuring and Monitoring Practice – Tracking System: Effective tracking aids in building an accurate self-model, helping to discern relationships between desired outcomes and influences.
• Retrospective Practice – Journaling & Reviewing System (J&R System): This component focuses on shaping mental habits and learning from the past through structured journaling and reviews.

It will be difficult without these four elements to achieve effective personal growth. Follow the hyperlinks to my articles on each of the BIG4 when published. I only cover them very briefly here.

If I could pick only one of these, I would select Coaching or Therapy as the BIG1. In the coaching context, a great coach will likely help us to establish basic practices related to R&J, P&G, and Tracking at some point. However, they might support us with more urgent topics before implementing the BIG2-4. Moreover, a great coach will also help us to solidify our habits and maintain progress when new affordances arise (e.g., what to do with our BIG4 during vacations?). Other mechanisms of action in coaching are described in greater detail here.  

A well-designed tracking system provides you with information to build an accurate self-model and improve your life. Our default mindware evolved to generate good models for survival but not for thriving in a complex world, leading to specific biases that produce inaccurate conclusions. Tracking helps to overcome these limitations and offers several benefits: discerning relationships between desired outcomes and influences, motivating swift actions, boosting implementation of new habits,  achieving your goals more often, enabling you to answer life-changing questions, and obtaining an evidence-based, balanced, and continuous sense of progress. You can find the most comprehensive write-up about tracking here (when live). 

I recommend the following steps: 

• Specify the functions of your tracking system
• Select appropriate starter metrics
• Define the useful response scales
• Select a suitable tracking format (i.e., physical, app, or spreadsheet)
• Specify the time of the day
• Pre-mortem your tracking
• Cultivate a neutral and compassionate perspective towards tracking and yourself
• Get support
• Clean up and update your tracking
• Take action based on tracking

An R&J system has different functions, including effectively shaping our mental habits and learning from the past. Structured daily journaling helps us experience less or more of something (e.g., less anger or worry) via daily answers to specific questions designed to change our attentional habits. Without a review practice, we’ll be relying on our brain to identify patterns in our lives and draw conclusions, for example, about what makes us happy or what we like to do for work. The problem is that the brain is not that reliable in this regard. We need to set time aside to review our qualitative and quantitative data to update our models of ourselves and the world. You can find a comprehensive write-up here (when live). 

A G&P system has several functions, such as increasing clarity around what you want more or less of, informing our day-to-day behaviours, cognitions, and thoughts, giving our life juice, becoming better at planning and goal-setting, and knowing what opportunities to say yes or no to. You can find a comprehensive write-up here (when live). 

A weekly and quarterly R&J and G&P habit is a great use of our time because it’s likely that we will save much more than we spend on it. For example, if we spend one hour of productive time on a weekly review and plan, I would bet that it saves us more than one hour over the course of the next week. They also help us to prioritize, not according to our whims, but according to our explicated goals, which will make our daily actions much more effective. If we choose to do quarterly reviews and plans, we might want to add a quick PDS audit in which we consider what we might want to change about our system. 

Steps

• Decide to what extent you want to fully or partially adopt the BIG4
• Specify the functions and the form for the adopted BIG4

Distribute time across the BIG4 deliberately

I write more on the question of duration in each of the articles, but I do so in a rather abstract way because context is lacking. Here I can be more concrete. My recommendation for the distribution of the BIG4 is dependent on our level of experience.

If we are new to most of these practices, the main purpose is establishing the BIG4 as robust habits. The implication is that we should make them too small to fail. In this case, I recommend something like

1. Tracking: 10 minutes/daily
2. R&J:  10 minutes/daily + 20 minutes/weekly + 20 minutes/quarterly
3. G&P: 10 minutes/daily + 20 minutes/weekly + 20 minutes/quarterly 
4. Coaching/Therapy: 2-4 hours weekly/fortnightly (session: 1-2 hours; follow-up actions: 1-2 hours)

This would be a total of 30 minutes for tracking, R&J, and G&P daily each evening and an additional 40 minutes weekly for the latter two. Additionally, it would be 2-4 hours weekly for coaching/therapy. If we are unsure about the cost-benefit ratio of this system, we can start by listing the real opportunity costs. If we decide to journal for 30 minutes before we go to bed, then an unreal opportunity cost is 30 minutes of productive work at 10 pm compared to a real opportunity cost, which could be watching something on YouTube for 30 minutes at 10 pm. Then we either start by creating a baseline we want to compare this system to, or we can just go ahead and start tracking the key outcomes we care about for two months. 

If we are more advanced, then a bit more time could be relatively cost-effective. I recommend this: 

1. Tracking: 20-30 minutes/daily
2. R&J: 20 minutes/daily + 45-60 minutes/weekly + 45-60 minutes/quarterly
3. G&P: 20 minutes/daily + 45-60 minutes/weekly + 45-60 minutes/quarterly
4. Coaching/Therapy: 2-4 hours weekly/fortnightly (session: 2 hours; follow-up actions: 2-4 hours)

This is a solid amount of weekly input to drive consistent change over time. However, some people might want to consider an incremental and step-wise approach by, for example, viewing the BIG four as a goal to complete after a year, implementing one of them at a time to a point where we have 80% consistency before adding the next.

Steps

• Decide to what extent you want to adopt the ambitious starter or advanced version of the BIG4
• Update the form for your BIG4 specified earlier

Experiment and attenuate our inputs

Once we’ve established the BIG4, I recommend prioritizing experiments with them over experiments with new additional activities. Deliberate experimentation will help us develop our understanding of what makes each component of the BIG4 and the system as a whole cost-effective. Our measurement system should enable us to understand the impact of the input changes on our desired outcomes. For example, we need to understand if our 5-minute journaling focused on gratitude that has one prompt, “what am I grateful for today”, (input), is actually making us more grateful or happy (outcome). Input is a function of time invested (i.e., total time or time per activity), range of performed interventions (e.g., BIG4 or BIG4+), and characteristics of a specific intervention (e.g., extensiveness or deliberateness of the components). When we think about an experiment, it is important to be clear on the desired outcomes (i.e., functions or personal development goals), and then we can ask ourselves about promising changes we could make to existing interventions and what new interventions we could try. This helps us avoid doing experiments that don’t contribute to our outcomes (e.g., purely shiny, fun, or available experiments). When we run experiments, we need to capture updates about interventions on our page. For example, after our first three sessions with a great coach, we may discover that the activity is much more impactful than we expected. 

It’s important to realize that we need to adjust the PDS as our goals and life circumstances change. For example, if we want to be a calmer person with more peace of mind, perhaps we will establish a daily mindfulness meditation habit to help us observe and let go of unpleasant feelings and sensations without instinctively trying to push them away when they appear. Suppose that we do that consistently for a year. At that time, we may have become a calmer person, in which case it’s time to move on to something else. Perhaps we will decide that the next step on our journey will be to become more self-compassionate. In order to achieve that, we may decide to swap our habit of mindfulness meditation for the habit of self-compassion (or loving-kindness) meditation. 

Such changes will need to be reflected in our system; they will have to be updated in accordance with changes in our goals and corresponding habit changes, and so on. Having regularly scheduled reviews (e.g., weekly and monthly) can help us notice opportunities to update our system in this way. Do not become a slave to your system! It’s meant to serve you and move you toward what matters to you in an efficient way. When something is no longer working or is outdated, it must be changed. 

As for significant lifestyle changes, imagine we become a parent or enter a romantic relationship. We’ll likely need to rearrange our priorities. We’ll have less time for ourselves and may need to make adjustments to how our PDS fits into our lives. Adapting the use of our PDS to changing circumstances is important for ensuring we’ll keep using it over time in whatever way makes sense as our life continues to evolve. 

I recommend having a checklist that details the steps that follow from changes in our lives or changes in our personal development goals. The main lever will be to adjust our BIG4 accordingly. For example, if we discover that cultivating intellectual humility is now a higher priority goal than developing gratitude, then we may want to replace our gratitude journaling practice with regular exercises in intellectual humility. 

Steps

• Schedule time for the subsequent steps (advised as part of a quarterly review)
• Rate how well the form of the BIG 4 is serving each function on a 1-10 scale
• Answer why you gave a specific rating
• Define what promising experiment you want to run for higher scores
• Implement the changes
• Evaluate qualitative and quantitative output data

PDS in Action

Let’s assume our object-level functions for our PDS are to improve our well-being, productivity, character, and non-technical skills. These goals aren’t immediately very actionable: what should we do differently on a daily basis in light of this goal? I don’t mean that it’s not useful to have high-level goals, but rather that we need to concretize them further. 

In coaching, we could brainstorm what our biggest bottlenecks or pain points are in relation to these goals because we need to carefully select our battles. Our time and energy are limited, and some actions will move us closer to the person we want to be much faster than others. More specifically, we can ask ourselves, “What drains my happiness on a daily basis?”, and if, say, our response is the mental habit of unproductive worrying, then we will make reducing this mental habit our number one quarterly personal development goal.

Our coach (or therapist) helps us explore a wide solution space, and we decide to start a “worrying journal” to gain awareness of the patterns or categories of things that we worry about most often, e.g., our career, finances, and health. At the same time, our coach might remind us to counterbalance the additional attention worry is receiving by establishing a “peace journal” where we capture moments at which we feel peaceful. Next, they might ask us to track our level of worry daily and write down what triggered the worry (e.g., content about nuclear threats or the stock market). Either in the coaching session or during our review, we might decide that it would be an effective action to block websites related to the stock market and the Russia-Ukraine war so we can only access them for 30 minutes/per day or per week. The solution space is generally vast. Reducing financial worry can be further achieved by decreasing our expenses, negotiating for a raise, applying for jobs, reading a book about budgeting, or something else.

When considering concrete actions, it also helps to have some behavior change principle that we’re incorporating into our thinking. For example, we might want to reward ourselves for acting in alignment with our goal. That means that whatever concrete action we select in service of our financial goals, we’d want to somehow reward ourselves for taking that action, as we expect that to make it more likely that we’ll continue to take such actions in the future as well. In practice, this could mean treating ourselves to a hot bath (or whatever we enjoy) when we’ve had our salary negotiation. 

Example page/system

Personal Awesomeness System

1. Functions
   1. System-level: The Personal Awesomeness System should ensure that our development is motivating, effective, cost-effective, deliberate, abundance-based, grounded, continuous, and impactful by 
      • Accounting for my current level of motivation and maintaining my motivation to use it (must-have: if this isn’t satisfied, everything else is irrelevant) 
      • Exploring different development budgets
      • Discovering a rich set of goals
      • Prioritizing goals wisely
      • Generating a rich set of interventions for top goals
      • Adopting external ideas when they are promising
      • Selecting the most promising interventions
      • Formulating testable hypotheses
      • Designing pragmatic experiments
      • Measuring change cost-effectively
      • Collecting qualitative and quantitative data from different sources
      • Paying more attention to the side we are biased against for a while (e.g., actively notice signs of progress, stagnation, or regress)
      • Evaluating our progress regularly
      • Experimenting with promising input-output pairs
      • Updating our models swiftly
      • Eliminating what is clutter, isn’t working, and is overly complex 
      • Learning about new ideas cost-effectively
   2. Object-level
      • Generic
        • Cultivating productive cognitive, emotional, and behavioral habits
        • Improve our well-being, productivity, character, and non-technical skills
      • Specific
        • Reduce the mental habit of unproductive worrying
2. Form
   1. System/Component 0 (BIG0: PDS)
      • Function
        • System-level: see above
        • Object-level: see above
      • Form – what are your key workflows?
        • Investment: 4-8 hours/weekly
        • BIG4
   2. System/Component A (BIG1: Coaching)
      • Functions 
        • System-level: see related article
        • Object-level: mostly similar to PDS
      • Form – how much time you would invest, how you would use it, and with whom?
        • Coaching session: 2 hours/weekly
        • Coaching actions: 2 hours/weekly
   3. System/Component B (BIG2: P&G)
      • Functions 
        • System-level: see related article
        • Object-level: mostly similar to PDS
      • Form – What are your goals? What are your plans to achieve them?
        • Personal development 
          • #1 Goal (Q4): reduce the mental habit of unproductive worrying
          • Plan
            • Remove internal barriers (root causes)
              • Understand what fuels unproductive worrying
              • Lessen the attachment to feeling in control and aversion to feeling out of control
              • Become more comfortable with worrisome events (e.g., death)
            • Remove external barriers (intermediate causes)
              • Financial worry
                • Create an emergency fund
                • Specify a minimal amount you need to feel financially secure
              • War-related worry
                • Reduce access to war-related information
        • Professional development
          • TBD
   4. System/Component C (BIG3: Tracking)
      • Function
        • System-level: see related article
        • Object-level: mostly similar to PDS
      • Form – what metrics would serve the functions?
        • Outcomes
          • Level of peaceful thoughts
          • Level of equanimity with worrisome thoughts
          • General level of equanimity
        • Influences
          • Meditation that evokes worrisome thoughts that are used to practice acceptance and disidentification 
          • Meditation that evokes soothing thoughts
          • Emergency fund active
          • Safe level of funds active
          • News blocks on laptop AND phone activated 
          • Treating myself to a hot bath if I meditated for three days in a row
   5. System/Component D (BIG4: R&J)
      • Functions
        • System-level: see related article
        • Object-level: mostly similar to PDS
      • Form – what questions would serve the functions?
        • Daily growth journal (4-6 weeks)
          • Worry journal
            • What triggered worrisome thoughts today?
            • When did I relate well to worrisome thoughts today?
          • Peace journal
            • When did I feel at ease and peace today?
            • What triggered these feelings?
            • Did I pause to savor? If not, what would you have needed to do?
            • Savor the moment again for 30 seconds
        • Weekly learning review
          • What patterns can I notice going through last week’s daily reflections? 
          • What are two to three actions I can take today to feel more at ease and at peace?
          • How can you make any of the BIG4 more fun and pleasant?
          • What are two to three actions I take today to reach higher consistency with my desired habits?
3. Journal
   1. Today
      • Discovered a big block in coaching: the mental habit of unproductive worrying—made it the big personal development goal for Q4 
      • Implemented changes across the BIG4 to significantly reduce unproductive worrying
   2. Three months ago
      • Read Paul’s article and was pumped to create the PDS
      • Implemented the BIG4 MVP

Conclusion

Let me summarize the high-level process 

1. Explicate the functions (or ends) of your PDS
2. Design forms and update the PDS

In the initial phase, it’s essential to establish clear and motivating functions for your PDS. Consider adopting this overarching purpose: the PDS should facilitate your transformation in a way that is effective, cost-effective, deliberate, comprehensive, evidence-based, continuous, and impactful with regard to well-being, productivity, and character. “Clear and motivating” means that our functions are explicitly written down and phrased in a way that resonates with us. “Cost-effective” means that the job of the PDS is not only driving positive change but doing so in a cost-effective manner. “Deliberate” means establishing and updating our PDS with regards to discovering, selecting, measuring, and adjusting intervention cost-effectively and avoiding common failure modes. “Comprehensive” means that the PDS should help you discover a wide range of promising personal development goals and interventions or intervention updates. “Evidence-based” means that our PDS helps us evaluate our progress based on different qualitative and quantitative data sources. “Continuous” means that your system is built in a way that you can realistically execute consistently to drive continuous improvements. “Impactful” means that your PDS not only ensures that you cost-effectively change things, but it should also ensure that you change the things that truly make a difference in your life.

For the second step, I advise you to integrate your PDS into your knowledge management practices by creating one comprehensive document that is structured clearly, meaningfully, and practically. It should include your system functions, current personal development goals, and past personal development experiments. Then you should continue by defining your weekly personal development budget deliberately. My recommendation is to make your 80/20 PDS the BIG4 (i.e., tracking, R&J, P&G, and coaching/therapy) and use the available budget for them. When you design the BIG4, the key is to make them increasingly more pleasant. Once you’ve established the BIG4, I recommend prioritizing larger experiments and changes in the BIG4 over exploring new big additions. Exploring smaller complementary changes, such as a simple blocking system, can still be useful. As you start integrating a PDS into your life, keeping it updated as you and your life circumstances change is important. 

Here is an action plan to create an 80/20 PDS (60-600 minutes)

1. Create a knowledge management page called “Personal Development System”: (a) use your existing system (e.g., gdocs) or (b) upgrade your system to a better one (e.g., Roam or Obsidian) | 2-300 minutes
2. Specify the high-level categories of the page: (a) use my suggested categories (for starters: functions, forms, and journal), (b) think independently, or (c) mix both | 3-60min
3. Explicate functions (or ends) for your PDS: (a) copy the functions I describe (least effort, least personal), (b) think independently about it, or (c) think independently and enrich afterwards | 3-60 minutes
4. List what forms (e.g., habits, apps, events, or people) you already have in place that serve the functions | 5-60 minutes
5. Decide what changes you want to make to the forms so they serve these functions better: (a) implement/change the BIG4 or (b) change based on some other considerations | 30-180 minutes
6. Schedule a recurring block to work on your PDS and BIG4 | 5-10 minutes
7. Define the next actions for your personal development: working on the PDS or something more specific, like reaching out to a practitioner | 7-30 minutes

I hope you enjoyed and learned something useful from the first post of the BIRR series. We discussed what a PDS is, why it is useful, and how to implement it. The personal development system is a bundle of all the elements that support our growth. It is vital because it helps avoid many failure modes that arise on the personal development journey (e.g., not knowing if we actually are making progress). I recommend seeing personal development as a probability game and starting that game with the BIG4 as our PDS. 

Let’s start winning repeatedly and growing effectively!

Please leave a comment if you found this article useful and want more articles. I need the responses to evaluate if writing is a good use of time compared to coaching people. Thanks! 🙂

Thanks to Simon Möller, Adam Tury and Sebastian Schmidt for their critical comments as well as Jonathan Mair and Teis Rassmussen for their editorial support on earlier drafts.

Additional Example

Personal Awesomeness System

1. Functions
   1. System-level: see article
   2. Object-level
      • Specific
        • Become more compassionate with myself
        • Increase the joy at work
        • Improve conflict resolutions with partner
2. Form
   1. System/Component B (P&G)
      • Functions 
        • System-level: see article
        • Object-level: see above
      • Form
        • Professional goals
          • #1 (2023): Increase the joy at work
        • Personal goals 
          • #1 (2023): Become more compassionate with myself
          • #2 (2023): Improve conflict resolutions with partner
   2. System/Component C (Tracking)
      • Function
        • System-level
          • Maintaining my motivation to grow myself and use the PDS and tracking
          • Measuring change cost-effectively
          • Collecting qualitative and quantitative data
          • Eliminating what is clutter, isn’t working, and is overly complex
          • …
        • Object-level: see above
      • Form
        • Outcomes
          • Satisfaction with being compassionate with myself
          • Joy at work
          • Satisfaction with conflict resolution
        • Influences
          • Level of challenge (today)
          • Level of harsh or unkind self-talk
          • Self-compassion mediation
          • Co-working
          • Humours micro interactions with collegues
          • Conflict (today)
          • Severity of conflict
          • Use of conflict resolution checklist
          • Hug and word of appreciation after resolution
   3. System/Component D (R&J)
      • Functions
        • System-level: see article
        • Object-level: see above
      • Form
        • Daily growth journal
          • What triggered harsh or unkind self-talk? 
          • What was the harsh or unkind self-talk?
          • What could have prevented the conflict from escalating?
          • How can I make my work more easier and more fun tomorrow?
        • Weekly learning review
          • How can you make any of the BIG4 more fun and pleasant?
          • What are two to three actions I take today to reach higher consistency with my desired habits?