The Importance of Implementing Systems
Discover more from Oren Cohen
The Importance of Implementing Systems
And how the lack of them affected my performance.
How many things you say you’ll do you actually do? In today’s newsletter I want to explore why implementing systems around your business is so important. Without them we are adrift.
Let’s dive in!
What We Can Learn From The 9-5
Any person who has a day job has an idea how they’re day is going to look before they start it. Here’s an example of my day at my day job:
Arrive and make coffee. Maybe Socialize a bit if the opportunity presents itself in the office kitchen.
Take a look at my tasks list on JIRA (or if I’m already locked onto one task, keep working on it).
Daily meeting at 11:45 where each of us updates our team leader with our task status and receive important updates from the higher ups when those are announced.
After the daily meeting we go out to lunch at 12:00 PM (usually) and eat together as a team.
Coming back to the office and work for the rest of the day. If there are other meetings, they are scheduled in that post-lunch time.
Leave on my scheduled time and go home.
Whether you agree with this schedule or not, you can’t deny one thing: there’s a structure to my workday. And, in addition to the structure, there are also written tasks. Someone else sat down to make sure I have a clear idea of what I need to work on each day.
So, workday-wise I’m doing great. Now let’s look at my 5-9.
What My Days After Work Look Like
When I end my workday, I don’t immediately go back home. Since I sit all day, I’m also taking the time to get off the bus in a different station and walk home. That walk takes me to the beach and past 10,000 steps for the day. Here’s a picture I took there yesterday.
When I get back home, I usually take a shower, eat something, and would sit at my computer, exhausted.
So, while I give myself some time to recover after my workday ends, my brain is mostly done for the day. I would watch videos and waste the two hours from eight to ten PM and go to bed.
On other occasions when I’m not feeling too exhausted, I write for Nerdy Modern Blog. However, Nerdy Modern Blog doesn’t have a lot of earning potential at the moment. As of writing these words, Dropout doesn’t have an affiliate program and Worlds Beyond Number is a free podcast. It wouldn’t make sense to recommend affiliate products in my articles either.
So, the only clear motivator for that blog is Adsense but they didn’t approve my site yet claiming the content is of Low Value. Deep down, I know I’m doing a hobby and not a business. And my motivation reflects that fact.
The first step to a better system is knowing there’s a monetary value to something you want to do. Nerdy Modern Blog is a Ghost blog who also has a membership. But that membership only becomes viable when the blog has ads (It removes them for logged in users).
So, I thought long and hard about what I should do. And in last week’s issue I updated you about my decision to invest into creating content about coding.
Systematizing My Coding Content
Creating content about coding is an absolute no-brainer for me.
I avoided doing so because I had impostor syndrome. Who am I to create content about coding? Will I be judged for what I teach other people? Am I good enough?
The reality is I’m a software engineer who’s been writing code for six years. I’m totally able to teach newbie coders how to do things. I can make a course, a newsletter, and write on social media to build an audience of software engineers.
And that’s exactly what I’ve been deciding to do. The best way to create content that resonates with people is to create content THEY asked for.
But it could take time for them to find me and ask me things, so instead, I’m going to write online for Mike who is my newbie software Engineer Avatar. He’s in his 20s and is learning how to code. He’s at that stage where he doesn’t have a lot of hands-on experience and that’s something I can help him change. Mike might be in college, or he might even be working a different day job and learning to code on the Side.
Mike, like many other software engineers, is VERY good at googling things about Python - his chosen language - and I aim to be in the first page to help him.
So that leaves us with a few action items:
Help Mike wherever I see him online.
Publish content on the blog that Mike finds helpful.
Schedule tweets and blog posts to go out automatically regularly.
What’s the monetary result? Mike wants me to take him by hand through a course to learn to code better. I incorporate all the questions he’s been asking me into it so it’s a complete solution for him (even though I answered his questions in separate content).
The road to get there is long, so let’s introduce the final cog in the machine that binds everything together.
Using a Calendar + Trello
It might seem obvious, but just like I mentioned in the beginning, we all need a way to organize our thoughts.
It’s very easy to forget to do what you want to do. And that’s where Trello comes in. However, You don’t always think about scheduling doing those things you wrote down. Instead of writing them down and getting the motivation to do them, schedule time for them on your calendar.
Fortunately, Trello integrates with Google Calendar and each time you create a task you can also schedule it. I’m not sure if it’s a paid feature or not but it exists.
In addition, you also need to schedule other things in your life like going to the gym or meeting up with friends. You’re probably using a calendar in some capacity, you just need to up your game.
Consistency Will Change Your Life
One thing I’ve seen happen to other people is that when they focus their energies on one thing, they change their lives. So, while I enjoy writing on NMB, it’s a hobby - not a business. It might become a business later on, but for now it’s not.
Oren Codes has the potential to become a true business. I can make digital products about code to help people. And I can even start a YouTube channel that has the potential for evergreen content.
So, let’s see what 3 months of consistent posting on Twitter and my blog can do for my business.
What will you build?