{3.4} build systems by working manually, organizing patterns, and mechanizing them

• In ‘Hack Your Brain with Elaborate Coping Mechanisms’, Tris explains that he creates systems, personally and professionally, through this process:
  1. Humanize. The first several iterations of a system should be created manually, on paper if necessary.
  2. Organize. Identify the patterns that emerge from your manual work organically.
  3. Mechanize. Automate those patterns using checklists, flowcharts, or software.
• This is sort of a natural progression that I’ve noticed in my own work; you typically only notice that you need to mechanize because the manual work becomes tedious or ineffective.
• But I think we tend to skip the step of organizing.
• For example, when people are struggling to manage their projects, they often go from software to software trying to fix a problem they haven’t even identified. They move the same projects, with the same basic properties, between tools and it doesn’t do much because they didn’t take the time to figure out where the roadblock is — in other words, they skipped organizing the system before trying to mechanize it.
• I talked a lot about this in my Project Management Peace training. One of my primary arguments was that {3.4a} software is not a system, it’s a way to store and display your system.As in, ClickUp is not a project management system; it’s a tool meant to hold your system and show it to you in a way that (hopefully!) makes it easier to work within your system. I think one of the cornerstones of productivity is the realization that you have to build and iterate your own system before looking for software that can be an asset to that system.