what catches you?

Let me give you a brief walkthrough of my day so far as I’m writing this:

It's Sunday, and I've gotten just four hours of sleep. I jolted awake at 6 AM without an alarm and spent some time watching YouTube before heading out to surf at 7.

I returned at noon with a bruised knee and ankle. After enjoying a good lunch, I settled at my desk at 4 PM. It's now 11 PM, and I haven't left my chair once. My eyes are watering, and the room feels like it's spinning.

Looking at my day, you might see chaos – poor sleep, intense activity, and hours glued to a desk. But there's something deeper at work here. Even on my most exhausted days, certain patterns emerge. The dedicated work hours. Writing this dial the night before. These routines keep me moving forward, regardless of how I feel.

This is the power of systems, and it brings me to this great quote I came across:

“We rise to the level of our standards, but we fall to the level of our systems.”

Think about it this way: Your standards are like the stars you navigate by – they show you what's possible and pull you forward.

But your systems? They're the ship that carries you through both calm seas and storms. A steady vessel that keeps moving, regardless of the weather.

When everything aligns, our high standards propel us toward our definition of ‘success’. But systems are our safety net, the reliable foundation we fall back on when motivation wanes and nothing else seems to work.

On our worst days, (and we all have them ) we don't fall to our aspirations. Instead, we fall to our habits, our routines, our systems.

We tend to find a sense of comfort in these daily rituals we build.

Whether it's splashing cold water on your face first thing in the morning or losing yourself in a book before bed – do anything enough times and it carves its own groove in your life.

Muscle memory per se. 🧠

Soon enough, skipping that bedtime reading feels like leaving the house without shoes. The habit becomes part of who you are, a thread in the fabric of your day.

Remember learning to ride a bike? The training wheels weren't there for your best moments – they were there for the wobbly ones.

Your daily systems serve the same purpose. They're not just routines; they're your personal infrastructure for progress. Your safety net. 🥅

The beauty of systems is that they create a floor for your performance, not a ceiling.

• When you have a morning routine, you never start from zero.

• When you have a workout system, you never have to decide if you should exercise.

• When you have a journaling habit, you never lose touch with your thoughts.

• When you have a planning system, you never completely lose direction.

Your systems determine your baseline – the level below which you simply will not fall. Your standards, on the other hand, pull you toward your potential.

Alright, now how do you apply this?
Two questions.

1. What happens on your worst days?
   That's your system at work.
   

2. What happens on your best days?
   That's your standards showing you what's possible.

The key is to deliberately design both.

Set standards that stretch you: Dream big, expect more from yourself, visualize excellence

Build systems that catch you: Create routines, habits, and environments that make progress inevitable

Remember that small actions compound: Your system doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be consistent.

Make your good habits inevitable: Remove friction from positive actions, add friction to negative ones

Trust the process: Focus on showing up, not on being exceptional every time

Every day, we make a choice between rising to our standards or falling to our systems. The trick is to build systems strong enough that even falling feels like progress.

Remember this: On your best days, let your standards pull you toward excellence. On your harder days, trust your systems to carry you through.
Progress isn't about being perfect – it's about being consistent.

There's a certain kind of strength that comes not from being invincible, but from knowing you don't have to be. It comes from building systems so solid that they carry you through storms. It comes from understanding that your worst days are just as valuable as your best ones – because they prove your systems work.

Wear your bruises proudly. Let your tired eyes remind you that you're building something real. Something that works not just when you're strong, but especially when you're not.

Because that's when it matters most.

Hope you’ve had a good first week of the new year. Here’s to another one, and another.

Godspeed. ⚡️