A short, informal YouTube talk by George Kao advising viewers to focus on daily systems and processes rather than obsessing over goals. He argues that systems (daily outreach numbers, referral processes, habits) make goal achievement more likely, are more sustainable, and reduce stress, illustrated by a client-acquisition example and a comparative anecdote about US vs Japanese Olympic archery teams.
Hi, this is George Kao, and in this short video, I want to encourage you to focus on systems every day rather than goals. It is good to have a goal so that you have some understanding of what kind of system you need to create to make that goal more likely. But none of us can predict with accuracy whether any of us can reach our goals, right? Because reality has so many factors affecting us that we have no idea. And all we can do is to create the systems that make the goal achievement more likely. The problem with focusing on the goal every single day is that your subconscious will keep telling you that you're not there, that you're not there, that you're not there. So, for example, let's say you wanted to get, you know, 30 clients in the next six months. I mean, whatever your number is, right, every day you're working, you're going to say, I need 30 clients. How many clients do I have right now? One, two? I mean, whatever it is, your subconscious will keep telling you, you're not there, you're not there, you're not there. The difference is when you focus on the system, which is okay. If I want to get 30 clients in the next six months, that means I need to reach out to this many people per day or per week, whatever. You. The thing about systems is you don't have to follow someone else's system. You can, of course, borrow principles and lessons learned from. From other people's systems, but you need to create a system that really works for your energy, for your values, and still gives you a good chance of reaching the goal. Okay? So you know, whether it's reaching out to a certain number of prospective clients a week or reaching out to a certain number of prospective referral sources per week, or whatever it is. Create a system. This is helpful if you have a business coach or just really any colleague or friend that you can bounce ideas with, okay? So that you can create a system that works for you. So focus on the system. And I'll give you one quick story. There's a famous story of the US Archery Olympics archery team. The people who shoot bows and arrows in the Olympics competing with the Japanese archery team. And what happened was that the US Archery team was so focused on the goal, because that's very American, very Western to focus on. I gotta hit the target. It's all about the goal. And they were continually messing up, okay? Whereas the Japanese archery team, they were taught to focus on the system, the whole execution, how you pull the bow, how you let it go, how you breathe before you pull the bow. The whole process they were focused on instead of the end result. And because they were focused so much on the process and they were ironically able to reach their goal, much more likely and with less stress. So I really encourage you, and I'm going to put some more notes attached to this video to give you some more ideas of what systems you could focus on. But every single day, focus on your systems, fix your systems, upgrade, optimize your processes rather than get hung up on the goal, getting attached to the results. So until the next video, I wish you well and I wish you a clear focus on your systems rather than goals. Take care of.
