Goals, systems, and imperfections

I like to read about productivity and achievement a lot, because that’s basically the American dream, kicking ass and taking names and relaxing on a throne made of gold.

And it occurred to me that this is another place where kintsugi ideas come into play. Well, technically, wabisabi ideas, but I had an interesting picture in my head when I thought of this that was a type of kintsugi. Unfortunately, I can’t draw very well, so you’ll just have to imagine for yourself.

But if a goal is the top of a pyramid, then systems to achieve that goal are all of the blocks underneath it. I’m sure most people have seem some sort of drawing like that. But, most achievement based drawings fail to put in real life elements which interfere with goals, the cracks that can weaken the entire edifice. And in the process of achieving their goal, the person working through their systems has to fix those cracks as they go, paving them over with something to hold them together. It’s not always gold, exactly, but you see my thoughts. The cracks in any of our systems gives us ways to look at our systems and see where they were flawed. If we can improve those systems and remove those flaws, then the systems become better and transform into gold. Sometimes we just brute force our way through the cracks, and that’s ok, but it’s not great. Whenever we see a crack in life, it’s far better to turn it into gold.