Welcome to November! We officially have two months left in the year - 58 days, including the holidays. As every November begins, there’s a collective energy in the air, a mix of reflection and urgency. You can feel it at the gym, in the office, and even scrolling social media. Everyone’s either trying to finish the year strong or already planning how to start the next one better. It’s a season of triumph, reflection, or ground making, and everything in between.

We often talk in here about continuing to diminish the power that “New Year’s Resolutions” have over our self-development protocols. We, as a society, rely on this flipping of the calendar to be the end-all, be-all of our newfound motivation. As we have often discussed, this leads to a short burst of momentum at the beginning of the year that inevitably fades - the downfall most people feel - but it also leads to a diminishing of the last few months of the year. We’ve already missed our goals, the holidays are coming - why not just wait until January 1 like everyone else?

Instead of our normal structure today, I am going to bring everyone in on the singular thing I have been most focused on this year, and something that I hope can help inspire you to lean into as we finish this year, and to build a sturdier foundation for 2026.

That idea is simple: Systems > Goals.

"Goals are for people who care about winning once. Systems are for people who care about winning repeatedly." - James Clear

I am a goal setter at heart. I always have been. Set this weight to get to in this many months. Set this time to break in this endurance event on this day. Set this position I want to achieve by this age of my life in my company. Make this amount of money by this year of my life. Etc. A wheel familiar to any of you goal setters out there as well.

If you haven’t read “Atomic Habits” by James Clear (well, first - order the book now and read it. It’s that good), then let me summarize quickly the genesis of this transition from goals to systems. James Clear spent years of his life analyzing habits, goals, and what makes people successful in their individual personal development pursuits. The book is a summary of those findings, with the intention to provide actionable ideas that can have a long-term impact in simple-to-execute ways. The primary idea of that book that has stuck with me is the idea of creating systems versus setting goals.

On the same breath, I will also acknowledge that I still believe in the power of setting goals. For me, the best framework that I have been able to execute and maintain continued success has been this - Set a goal first in my head, then work my way backward to discover what systems I can put in place to help me build towards that goal.

If I had to assess myself, I would say that I still place too much emphasis on the goal portion than the systems portion, so as you are reading this, understand that this idea and mindset is something we are actively working on together.

The problem with goals isn’t that they’re bad - they’re simply incomplete. They create a binary world of success or failure. Either you achieve the goal and feel proud for a moment, or you fall short and feel defeated. There’s really no middle ground. That’s why so many people sprint toward a target, cross the finish line, and then stop moving (or if you are like me, feel lost until you have identified what the next “goal” is).

You hit your sales quota, then take your foot off the gas. You train for a marathon, run it, and then hang up your shoes until the next training block. You lose the weight, then slowly gain it back. In each case, the goal served as the motivator. Once it was gone, so was the reason to keep going.

The opposite happens too. When a goal feels far away - when you’re behind on your target, miles from the outcome you want - it can stop motivating you altogether. Instead of inspiring effort, it builds discouragement. The gap between where you are and where you want to be becomes too wide to bridge. You don’t just lose momentum; you lose belief. That’s the trap of pre-achievement defeat.

Systems eliminate that trap. A system shifts the focus from the outcome to the process, from the scoreboard to the play itself. As Clear writes, “The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.” When you fall in love with the process instead of the product, you don’t have to wait until the result to feel successful. You start winning every day you show up.

A goal might change your life for a moment. A system changes who you are. Achieving a goal gives you a temporary high - building a system gives you lasting identity. Clear reminds us that “true behavior change is identity change.” You can set a goal to read more, but the real shift happens when you start identifying as someone who reads daily. You can set a goal to get fit, but transformation begins when you see yourself as an athlete. Systems make that shift possible because they reinforce the kind of person you’re becoming every day you act in alignment with it.

As we move through these final weeks of the year, it’s tempting to write new goals. But maybe the more powerful move is to build the systems that make those goals irrelevant. The system will carry you long after December ends. The system compounds, turning effort into identity, consistency into progress, and discipline into freedom.

I have personally been thinking a lot about what I can do to further lean into these ideas, in each of my individual buckets. Some of those include:

Running

I will be fairly transparent with you all here - the last marathon issue took a toll on my running (mentioned below in physique too). I couldn’t run for 3.5 weeks at all, and when I came back, a lot of that fitness had been lost. And when I started running again, that was a pretty frustrating realization. Frustrating enough that, for a while, it was hard to find the motivation to go run at all. I still got out there a few times a week, but it very much felt like a check-the-box activity.

But as I sit here today, one thing I know about myself and that I can be proud of for this whole system discussion is - I am a runner. I always will be. I want that to be part of my identity. And I have the itch again. So as we finish the year, I am going to be thinking a lot about what the system is for my success with running. How many days a week? What time of the day? How many miles? How am I building that mileage, etc. That missed goal and the effects after won’t be the end of this journey.

Physique

CC point above. Not only did the running failure take a mental toll, the rhabdo did its work to take a physical one too. I was unable to train at all for over 3 weeks. I went back to my journal from 2024 just to check - there were 17 days all of last year where I didn’t run or lift. I lost some muscle, and didn’t like the way I looked.

As I got back in the gym, some of that strength and muscle started to come back. And everyone who has put on size before knows, a little bit of that has come on with some fluffy weight.

One thing that I know about myself is that I have to have a balance between performance and aesthetics. If I am the fittest runner I have ever been, but don’t love the reflection in the mirror, I will feel a lack. The same vice versa. So as I head into the end of this year, a lot of these systems for my gym routine are going to be focused around that balance. Around eating to support my workouts, but to support the look too. About lifting weights and doing intense cardio. About what that protocol looks like on a weekly and monthly basis, rather than specific training blocks.

Reading

I pride myself on reading, but I know I can always do more. And I know that when I falter, it is because I either commit to a bad book for too long, or stay reading the same topics or series for too long. I set a goal this year to read 36 books, which is still on the table. But if I read 34, in the framework of goal setting, is that considered a failure? For 2026, I want to focus on reading every single day. One page, one hundred pages. Whatever. And see where that shakes out.

Home Life / Relationship

Life is about to change shortly here! Our little one is about two months away from making his entrance, and I am not naive enough to think that won’t rock the boat on some things. As someone who chooses to prioritize their relationship, I want to be cognizant of the systems that can help me do so. What does prioritizing that look like in the framework of having a kid? How can I ensure Allison and I take dedicated time to feel connected? What are those evening routines that can help foster that? What can I do to make sure each day that I, as the male of the family who can’t produce breast milk, am compensating to show up and make life easier for those two? What does a date night look like in this new structure? All of these are system-related.