You Are a System
Maybe you know a few of these tricks.
On-time-you sets the clock ten minutes ahead to give running-late-you a fighting chance.
Motivated-you puts the alarm across the room so sleepy-you actually has to get out of bed.
Tonight-you lays out tomorrow’s clothes so morning-you has one less decision.
Planning-you sets three reminders for a calendar task because super-busy-you could use a little help from on-top-of-it-you.
Others put the keys by the door, automate savings, hide distracting apps, or leave themselves reminders where they know they’ll see them.
None of this is particularly remarkable.
Until you ask: Why do we design systems around ourselves?
More interestingly…
Why do they work?
Because intention isn’t the only thing shaping what you do.
- You have patterns
- You respond to cues
- You adapt
- You anticipate
- You conserve effort
- You learn
In other words:
🫵 You are a system.
Once you recognize that, something else becomes easier to see.
The systems around you know this too. They…
- Create cues
- Remove friction
- Add friction
- Create urgency
- Offer rewards
- Signal status
- Make some behaviors easier than others
Sometimes intentionally.
Sometimes simply because that’s what the system produces.
The System Inside
Calling yourself a system might sound strange.
We usually reserve the word for things that feel larger than us.
- A company
- A government
- A factory
- A transportation network
But size isn’t what makes something a system.
A system is a set of interacting elements that produces patterns of behavior and outcomes over time.
You do that too.
Not because you behave predictably all the time.
You don’t.
→ Tired-you doesn’t always make the same decisions as rested-you.
→ Rushed-you doesn’t necessarily behave like unhurried-you.
→ Confident-you may speak when uncertain-you stays quiet.
But even those labels hide something.
Why is rushed-you rushing?
- Because you’re late for a meeting?
- Because you’re trying to make your child’s event?
- Because your body is telling you something urgently needs attention?
- Because being late has become associated with what might happen next?
The outward expression may look similar.
What produced it may be very different.
To see that interaction more clearly, it helps to distinguish what is already happening inside you from what is arriving from around you.
For the moment, draw the system boundary around yourself.
Inside that boundary are conditions already present — tiredness, expectation, memory, urgency, confidence, uncertainty …
Outside it are conditions arriving from the systems around you — deadlines, other people, signals, constraints, opportunities, interruptions, geography, the time of day, day of week …
The boundary you’ve drawn is useful. It distinguishes the two. But it isn’t a wall.
Tired-you, rushed-you, and confident-you aren’t different people. They’re the same person under different conditions.
Conditions change.
And your interior system responds to the mix.
You Already Model Yourself
That is what makes those little tricks at the beginning so interesting.
Tonight-you doesn’t know exactly what morning-you will do.
But tonight-you has a pretty good model.
Morning-you might be tired. Morning-you might not want another decision. Morning-you might be running late.
So tonight-you tilts the conditions in morning-you’s favor.
The clothes are already there.
One decision disappears.
Planning-you does something similar.
It cannot guarantee that super-busy-you will remember the task three days from now.
So it creates a signal.
Then another.
Then another.
We’re doing something surprisingly sophisticated in these ordinary moments.
- We observe our own patterns.
- We interpret what those patterns mean.
- Then we arrange conditions based on what we expect ourselves to do.
Sound familiar?
It’s not far removed from how we try to understand any other system.
Systems Meet Systems
Now put that interior system inside another one.
- A workplace
- A classroom
- A store
- An app
- A family
- A social network
The surrounding system produces conditions.
And you respond to them.
Sometimes you notice.
Sometimes you don’t.
- A notification appears.
- A deadline approaches.
- A line gets longer.
- Someone important enters the room.
- A process becomes easier.
- An option disappears.
Nothing has to tell you: This condition is now influencing your behavior.
Your system is already interacting with it, responding, adapting and perhaps even shaping it in return.
That’s the part that’s easy to miss.
We often talk about systems as though they exist over there… and people exist over here.
But participation brings them together.
→ The systems around you produce conditions.
→ The systems inside you encounter those conditions.
What happens next emerges from the interaction.
Before You Can Explain It
This also means your experience inside a system contains information.
- Something feels easier.
- Something feels irritating.
- Something keeps catching your attention.
- Something makes you hesitate.
- Something suddenly feels urgent.
You may not yet know why.
And whatever explanation eventually comes to mind may or may not be right.
But something has already happened.
Your interior system has responded.
This is where interpretation gets interesting.
Your interior system is constantly interpreting and responding to what it encounters.
Often without explaining itself.
It simply feels like you.
No questions asked.
This Works Both Ways
There’s another consequence.
You aren’t only being shaped by systems.
You’re participating in shaping them.
↔️ You respond.
↔️ Someone else responds to you.
↔️ The system adjusts.
↔️ A pattern forms.
- Maybe your workaround becomes the way everyone does it.
- Maybe your silence makes a meeting feel more settled than it actually is.
- Maybe your enthusiasm encourages someone else to participate.
- Maybe repeated behavior teaches an algorithm what to show you next.
The interaction continues.
Systems shape participants.
Participants shape systems… and participants.
Systems within systems, within systems.
Why This Matters
It’s tempting to explain behavior by looking only at the person.
- Why did they do that?
- Why didn’t they speak?
- Why did I click?
- Why did I forget?
- Why did this suddenly feel harder?
Sometimes the answer is personal.
Sometimes it’s structural.
Usually, more than one thing is participating.
Recognizing yourself as a system doesn’t remove responsibility.
And it doesn’t mean every response is predetermined.
It simply adds another place to look.
Not only: What did I decide?
But also: What conditions was I responding to?
And: What did those conditions bring out of my system?
Those questions leave room for something important.
👉 Agency.
Because agency isn’t pretending nothing influences you.
You become more agentic when you can see what is influencing you.
And even more so when you begin to understand why.
The systems model to hang with
We quietly build systems around ourselves because, somewhere deep down, we already know we respond according to patterns we may not fully understand — patterns that your experience keeps tuning, often without asking your permission.
Maybe the more interesting realization is that everyone else gets to build systems around us too.
And every time those systems meet…
something happens.
Challenge
You complete a task.
It requires three extra steps that don’t seem necessary.
Do you:
◾ follow them anyway
◾ skip them when you can
◾ create your own shortcut
⏵ What does each response suggest to you about the system?
⏵ What might your response tell you about what was happening inside you?
⏵ What kinds of tasks might cause you to choose one of the other responses?
⏵ What conditions might cause you to choose differently even if the task stayed the same?
⏵ How might what you see others doing influence what you choose to do?
The companion discussion on LinkedIn includes the MNKY Math take and is where the conversation continues.
Continue the publishing sequence
How we respond inside a system can tell that system something about us. But if you pay attention, it can become information for you too. Sometimes the first clue is what arrives before the thought.