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For our purposes, let's agree that goals are a reach-it-and-be-done situation, whereas a system is something you do on a regular basis with a reasonable expectation that doing so will get you to a better place in your life. Systems have no deadlines, and on any given day you probably can't tell if they're moving you in the right direction.

'aspergic design' - design which gives consideration to the working of every part of the system, except the biological part.

One of the big rules in not losing things is the rule of the designated place. A tray or shelf that is designated for a smartphone encourages you to put your phone there and not somewhere else.

you have letters to mail, put them near your car keys or house keys so that when you leave the house, they're right there. The principle underlying all these is off-loading the information from your brain and into the environment; use the environment itself to remind you of what needs to be done.

Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.

Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.

The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system.

Most important, understand that goals are for losers and systems are for winners. People who seem to have good luck are often the people who have a system that allows luck to find them. I've laid out some systems in this book that seem to work for me. Your experience will differ, but it always helps to be thinking in terms of systems and not goals.

Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.