Debug Your Productivity with Systems Thinking
Last week I wrote about how mental models power critical and creative thinking. This week I’m introducing a specific mental model—systems thinking—and using it to understand workflows in personal productivity systems.
I’m roughing out a very high-level introduction to systems thinking, fully aware that I’m oversimplifying. My goal is to provide the minimum framework required for us to explore how we can use systems thinking to better understand personal productivity systems. Remember that mental models are meant to be simple: they’re “good-enough” representations that help us begin to see things from new perspectives. A link to a more comprehensive and elegant introduction to systems thinking follows below.
Introducing Systems Thinking
If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves... There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
—Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
My inspiration for this article is Donella H. Meadows’ Thinking in Systems: A Primer, a highly recommended, easy-to-read book on this important topic. Systems thinking helps transform complex (unknowable) things into complicated (hard, but knowable) things. It's a perspective on how systems work, as well as a way of describing and visually representing them.
Meadows defines a system as “an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something.” A system must include three things: elements (identifiable parts), interconnections, and a function or purpose. The elements in a system can include cells, people, devices, software routines—virtually anything, as long as the elements are “interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time.”
How do you tell the difference between a “bunch of stuff” (a collection) and a system? A bunch of stuff is a system when:
you can identify its parts, and
the parts affect each other, and
together the parts produce an effect that's different from the effect of the parts on their own.
Here are a few examples of collections:
Tools in a toolbox
A database of customer names
A kitchen
In each of these examples, the parts are not interrelated and interdependent—the hammer and the screwdriver in the toolbox don’t interact with each other in any meaningful way.
These are examples of systems:
A football team
A smartphone
A tree
And of course, you!
Each of these examples is made up of interrelated and interdependent elements. The players on a football team and coaches are assembled for a particular purpose, to play the game of football following a particular set of rules, with a particular ball, on a particular field. The elements of the system are connected by the rules of the game.
Notice that some systems include subsystems—your body includes your respiratory system, nervous system, and pulmonary system to name just a few of your essential subsystems.
Systems have other essential features:
Interconnections between the elements of the system that hold the elements together, enable information to flow through the system
Feedback loops and controls (decision points) that regulate the system.
Stocks (the various elements of the system you can see, feel, count, or measure).
And most importantly, a function or purpose. Every system is designed to do something… The purpose of a system may not always be clear, so as Meadows notes, the best way to figure out a system’s purpose is to “watch for a while to see how the system behaves.” She adds “Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals.” As we all know, all too often, systems are defined by their unintended consequences.
Applying Systems Thinking to Personal Productivity Systems
Let’s use our basic model of systems thinking to explore two common problems in personal knowledge management systems. Productivity system users often build up a seemingly insurmountable backlog of tasks. Too often, users also find that they aren't producing the amount of finished work they'd like. Perhaps looking at these problems through a systems thinking lens can help us figure out what’s causing these issues.
Take a moment to review the diagram below:
Diagram 1: Projects or productivity system?
Does the diagram depict a bunch of projects or a productivity system? Notice that each project functions independently of the other projects. While each project includes a feedback loop, the loop only provides feedback on the tasks for that project—there are no connections between the projects. Even if you collect all the tasks for the four projects in one list (a task manager), there’s no information in this collection of projects that enables you to prioritize projects or tasks for the four projects. Finally, there’s no information that enables you to assess your resources (your available work time) or reliably commit to project due dates. Without a scheduling function, you can’t allocate your work time in a way that reflects your priorities or constraints (the number of work hours available in a given period of time).
This collection of projects may not look familiar, but the effects it produces are familiar to most of us:
a growing backlog of tasks because you can’t prioritize,
missed deadlines because project due dates don’t take into account competing priorities or available resources, and
increasing stress because there aren’t any feedback loops that allow you to assess your progress on all of your commitments, make necessary tradeoffs, and plan for the future.
Let’s see what a productivity system that begins to address these issues looks like.
Diagram 2: Productivity system with prioritized projects, tasks and scheduling
Diagram 2 shows how a collection of projects transforms into a productivity system when goals, a unified task list, and scheduling are introduced. Starting with your goals gives you the information you need to prioritize your projects and tasks. Integrating a simple scheduling function (your calendar) gives you the information you need to ensure that you are being realistic about how much time you have available for project-related tasks.
Now let’s look at what happens when you integrate a feedback loop into the system.
Diagram 3: Productivity system with prioritized projects, tasks, scheduling, and feedback flows
Feedback from your work sessions enables you to update and adjust your task list, assess your progress on your project due date commitments, and track your progress on achieving your goals.
What becomes clear when you analyze personal productivity systems using a systems thinking lens is that personal productivity depends on having clear goals, using those goals to prioritize your focus, and maintaining a regular (weekly) feedback loop. Without these elements, interconnections, and feedback loops in place and running smoothly, your system is just a collection point for tasks. A task list without prioritization and an ongoing connection to your calendar doesn’t help you understand what’s most important or what’s possible.
So, what’s happening when tasks pile up and your output slows down? Many productivity system breakdowns can be traced back to two issues. A weak or lost connection between your goals and the rest of your system will eventually lead to an inability to prioritize. An ineffective (or missing) weekly review routine will undermine your system’s ability to keep up with your current priorities and availability. If you aren’t using your current goals and weekly review to re-prioritize your projects and tasks, and reallocate your time, your system is functioning as if those elements were not in place at all.
Learn More About Systems Thinking
Mental models are lenses that help us see things in different ways. Viewing your productivity system through the lens of systems thinking helps clarify the role that elements in the system play, the interconnections between the elements, and the processes that keep the system tuned and running.
Systems thinking is an increasingly important tool because it helps us understand and refine complex systems. Researchers are using systems thinking to grapple with challenges such as climate change, income inequality, social justice, and healthcare. You can learn more about systems thinking and how it’s being used to understand these problems and many others on The Systems Thinker website.