I didn’t understand that peace and prosperity arrive after the mechanics are in order. This requires forethought, organization, and rational thinking, and that means well-attended systems. The way of the world is mechanical!

What is the most important difference between the manager of a large successful business and the manager of a small struggling business? The first manages systems; the second copes with bad results.

Your job is not to be a fire-killer. Your job is to prevent fires. Of course, in daily life you will always encounter fire-killing, but the idea is to minimize it.

The mantra of the Work the System method is to isolate-fix-maintain. It is not enough to know what to do. One must take action.

First, I would create the Strategic Objective, which would define us and set goals. Second, I would put together the General Operating Principles, which would serve as our guidelines for making decisions. Third, we would write out our Working Procedures, which would exactly define every recurring process of the business.

I try hard to “be here now,” but I spend some of that “here” time focusing on actions that will ensure future moments will be serene and efficient.

Grasp that each of the countless systems of your world is linear, a process. Like computer program code, they execute their steps in sequence. I’ll say it again: More often than not, the systems are recurring; they happen over and over again.

The focus must be on the proactive management of systems, not on coping with random system results.

The world is not a chaotic jumble of people, objects, and events clanging together in disarray. The world is a place of order and logic, a place of predictability. The world is a collection of logical systems!