The System is a model created by Andrew Ippoliti & Zach Valenti for effectively living a purposeful life.
Great question! Looking honestly at our performance to-date, there’s a gap between what we’ve hoped to accomplish and what we’ve actually gotten done. Upon reflection, it seems we’ve lacked a coherent system for making decisions. This document is our first attempt at creating this system.
The System has four parts:
- The Foundation
- Decisions
- Execution
- Reflection The Foundation is a combination of our beliefs, values, commitments, dreams & aspirations, and our principles. Ultimately, our principles are what we want to distill in order to guide our decisions. Decisions are important for determining what to do and how best to do it. In executing breakdowns, inefficiencies, and other unexpected results will happen. Reflection provides the feedback necessary to refine and revise The Foundation such that we improve our decision making.
The Foundation is a model for distinguishing the components that make each of us who we are - individually or at the level of group/organization. It can be visualized best as a pyramid, building from the bottom up.
Many people often mistake these for facts. When we believe something, we accept it as the truth. Distinct from scientific facts, beliefs do not need to be verifiable or reasonable. “Life is valuable” is a belief. “All people are created equal” is a belief.
Our values are things we hold as important, worthy, or useful. They express our beliefs and shape our commitments.
Commitment is being dedicated to a cause or activity. We find our values determine what we’re committed to and typically express our commitments in our dreams or aspirations for the future.
These are our hopes for or ambition of achieving something. It is typically future oriented. “I want to be an astronaut when I grow up” or “I dream of a day when all people will be treated with respect and dignity regardless of the color of their skin” are both examples of dreams & aspirations.
Principles are the foundation for a chain of reasoning. Basically, they are signposts for making decisions. Principles distill our beliefs, values, commitments, dreams, & aspirations into actionable directives. They are not dogmatic commands and should be revised and refined with reflection.
A conclusion or resolution reached after consideration. We’re talking about decisions around execution, which includes planning, strategizing, and doing.
Execution is the process of turning ideas into reality. We see execution as including what many people separate into planning & strategizing. The components of execution should be approached from the top down, starting with the more abstract, working down into specifics. Even at the abstract levels, we should always be specific with “when” and “what” such that it can be measured.
These are high level objects of our ambitions or efforts; an aim or desired result. They can be personal: “I want to lose 40 pounds by March.” They can be societal: “We will have a man on the Moon before the decade is out.” They can be anything, so long as they have a “what” by “when.” We see effectively defined goals as containing one or more projects towards accomplishing them.
Projects are more specific than goals. A project toward a goal of losing weight could be a 16-week marathon training program.
Tasks are the specific, time-bound actions required to complete a project. “Run for 30 minutes” isn’t a project, but a task to be completed.
Reflection is the process by which we can improve the system over time to increase our rate of success. In reflecting we look at what we struggled with and/or why we succeeded to tease out principles for directing future decision making. Particularly in the case of failures to perform, a principle will reveal itself as the “morale of the story”.
Please note: The System is a creation by two people who are so imperfect they felt they needed to create a system to make themselves more reliable. This is not to be read as the truth. You’re welcome to try it on. We encourage you to share your notes with us. Feel free to email us at the.system@uplift.is about this for any reason.