-James Clear, Atomic Habits
What this is: A reality check for ambitious professionals who’ve discovered that setting bigger goals somehow leads to feeling smaller. This is about why your immaculate goal-setting spreadsheet hasn’t changed your life, and what actually will.
What this isn’t: Another productivity hack promising you’ll conquer the world by 5 AM. No ice baths required. No promise that you’ll become a millionaire by Tuesday. This isn’t about doing more; it’s about building better.
Read this if: You’re exhausted from constantly chasing goals that move like goalposts. You’ve achieved impressive things yet still feel like you’re failing. You suspect there’s a fundamental flaw in how you’ve been taught to succeed, and you’re right.
Five Key Takeaways
- Goals are destinations; systems are vehicles – and you’ve been standing at the station wondering why you haven’t arrived
- Your daily habits matter more than your annual resolutions – those boring, unglamorous routines are secretly running your life
- Identity-based change beats outcome-based change – becoming the person who does the thing is more powerful than achieving the thing
- Stress isn’t conquered by achievement; it’s managed by design – your systems either protect or deplete you
- Small, consistent actions compound into transformation – but only if you actually do them consistently
Introduction: The Uncomfortable Truth About Your Precious Goals
You’ve done everything right. Vision boards. SMART goals. Annual planning sessions that would make a management consultant weep with joy. You’ve colour-coded your objectives, broken them into quarterly milestones, and set reminders that ping with the regularity of a cardiac monitor.
Yet here you are, reading an article about why goals don’t work, probably whilst simultaneously checking your email and wondering if you remembered to respond to that urgent request from three days ago.
James Clear put it rather plainly: “You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”
The first time I encountered this quote in my stress management practice, I’ll admit I bristled slightly. After all, I’d spent twenty years as a GP listening to accomplished people describe their ambitious goals whilst their bodies staged elaborate protests in the form of insomnia, digestive complaints, and what I privately termed “achievement anxiety.” Their goals were spectacular. Their systems were… well, let’s just say their systems were having a lie-down.
The uncomfortable truth? Your goals are probably fine. Possibly even inspiring. It’s your systems – the invisible architecture of your daily life – that are letting you down. And the beautiful irony is that whilst you’ve been obsessing over the destination, you’ve been ignoring the vehicle that’s meant to get you there.
The Story of Catherine Whitmore: When Success Became the Problem
Catherine Whitmore discovered she was falling apart on a Tuesday. Not dramatically, mind you. There were no film-worthy breakdowns, no throwing of staplers across boardrooms. Just the quiet realisation, somewhere between her third double espresso and a conference call about Q4 projections, that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt… anything, really.
The managing director of a mid-sized tech consultancy, Catherine had always been the woman who made things happen. At forty-three, she’d built an impressive career on the back of relentless goal-setting. “I’ll make partner by thirty-five,” she’d said. She did. “Revenue needs to double within three years.” It tripled. “This year, I’m finally getting fit.” She said this every January with touching optimism, and every January, by February, she’d remember why she hadn’t.
On this particular Tuesday, Catherine sat in her office – the one she’d coveted for five years, the one with windows overlooking the city – and realised the view might as well have been of a car park. She was achieving every goal she set, yet somehow losing ground. Her marriage felt like a polite business arrangement. Her teenage daughter communicated primarily through closed doors and Instagram stories. And her body? Her body was staging an increasingly vocal rebellion.
The tremor in her right hand had started three months ago. Nothing dramatic. Just a slight shake when she held her coffee cup, which she noticed because she held a lot of coffee cups. Her GP had run tests. Nothing wrong, he’d said, probably stress. Probably stress. As if stress were some minor inconvenience, like forgetting your umbrella.
Then there were the nights. Catherine would wake at 3:17 AM – always 3:17, as if her anxiety had set an alarm – her mind immediately spiralling into an exhaustive inventory of everything undone, everyone disappointed, every potential catastrophe queuing up like planes over Heathrow.
She’d tried to goal-set her way out of it, naturally. “Sleep eight hours.” “Reduce caffeine.” “Meditate daily.” She’d downloaded four meditation apps, each promising transformation in ten minutes. She’d open them, see the day counter reset to zero again, and feel the familiar squeeze of failure in her chest.
What Catherine couldn’t see – what none of us can see when we’re in it – was that her goals were irrelevant. Magnificent, but irrelevant. She’d been trying to solve a systems problem with a goals solution, rather like trying to fix a broken engine by staring harder at the map.
Her breaking point came during her daughter’s school play. Catherine had blocked it in her calendar weeks in advance, highlighted in red, marked “non-negotiable.” She’d even left work early, which felt transgressive and thrilling. She’d sat in the school hall, phone face-down in her bag, determined to be present.
But presence, she discovered, isn’t something you decide in a moment. It’s something you practice in systems. Within ten minutes, her mind had wandered to the client presentation. Her shoulders had crept toward her ears. Her jaw was clenched tight enough to crack walnuts. She was physically present but mentally drafting emails, and when her daughter took the stage, Catherine’s first thought was whether she could quickly check if Simon had sent that report.
Her daughter sang. A solo, apparently. Catherine knew this because everyone around her applauded particularly enthusiastically, and her daughter’s eyes searched the audience and landed on her mother’s face with an expression of such hopeful vulnerability that Catherine felt something crack open in her chest.
She’d missed it. Not because she wasn’t there. Because she’d built her life on systems that made it impossible to be there, even when she was there.
That night, Catherine sat at her kitchen table – marble countertops, beautiful and cold – and made a list. Not of goals. She’d done enough of those to paper the walls. Instead, she wrote: “What do I actually do every day?”
The answer was grimly illuminating. She worked, then worked some more, interrupted occasionally by eating food she couldn’t taste whilst reading emails. She “relaxed” by reviewing tomorrow’s schedule. She connected with her daughter through texts sent from ten feet away. She maintained her marriage through shared calendar updates.
Her goals said: be an excellent leader, present mother, healthy person, loving partner. Her systems said: work until you can’t think, caffeinate until you can, measure your worth by your output, and whatever you do, don’t stop moving because if you stop, you might notice how you feel.
The smell of rain came through the open window – that particular petrichor of late autumn that always reminded her of childhood. For the first time in months, she noticed it. Really noticed it. And she thought: “When did I stop noticing?”
Catherine didn’t know it yet, but this was the beginning. Not of achieving different goals, but of building different systems. Systems that would, eventually, allow her to rise.
Understanding Systems vs. Goals: The Alchemy of Change
Here’s what I’ve learned after twenty years of working with high achievers who’ve stressed themselves into my consulting room: Goals can be seductive liars.
They promise transformation. They feel productive. Setting a goal releases a little hit of dopamine that mimics actual achievement. You write “lose two stone” in your planner, and for approximately thirty seconds, you feel as though you’ve already done it. Then reality arrives with its usual lack of consideration for your feelings.
Goals focus on outcomes. Systems focus on processes. And processes – those boring, unglamorous daily routines – are where transformation actually lives.
Consider the executive who sets a goal to “be less stressed.” Lovely goal. Completely useless. What’s the system? Where’s the architecture? It’s rather like announcing you’d like to be taller without addressing the fundamental biological constraints of the situation.
Now consider the same executive who builds a system: “I will close my laptop at 6:30 PM daily. I will spend fifteen minutes walking before dinner. I will not check email after 8 PM.” That’s not sexy. It won’t look impressive on a vision board. But it will, over time, actually change the person’s experience of stress.
The fundamental difference is this: goals are about winning the game once; systems are about continuing to play the game indefinitely.
James Clear’s insight cuts deeper than simple productivity advice. He’s identified something that those of us in stress management have observed repeatedly: people don’t fail because they lack ambition or willpower. They fail because they’re operating with systems designed for failure.
Your system is the sum of your daily habits, routines, and environmental design. It’s what you actually do when no one’s watching, when motivation has left the building, when Tuesday afternoon feels like wading through treacle. And the brutal truth? Your current system is perfectly designed to give you the results you’re currently getting.
If you’re constantly exhausted, your system supports exhaustion. If you’re perpetually behind, your system creates perpetual behind-ness. If you’re stressed, your system manufactures stress with the efficiency of a German automobile factory.
This is simultaneously the worst news and the best news. The worst because it means you can’t goal-set your way out. The best because systems, unlike goals, are entirely within your control to change.
After fifteen years of hosting stress management retreats on the Camino de Santiago, I’ve walked alongside dozens of accomplished professionals who’ve discovered this truth the hard way. They arrive with impressive CVs and impressive stress levels, often nursing the belief that they just need to try harder, achieve more, and prove themselves further.
What they discover, usually around day three when their phones have lost signal and their carefully constructed professional personas have started to crack, is that the problem isn’t their goals. It’s that they’ve built their entire lives on systems that actively prevent them from thriving.
Why Systems Trump Goals for Stress Management
There’s a neurological reason why systems work when goals don’t. Your brain is fundamentally lazy (technically, it’s “energy-efficient,” but let’s call it what it is). It defaults to habits because habits require minimal cognitive load. They’re automated processes that run in the background whilst you consciously think about other things.
When you rely on goals, you’re asking your brain to maintain constant conscious effort toward a distant target. This depletes willpower, creates decision fatigue, and generally exhausts the very cognitive resources you need for the achievement you’re chasing.
When you build systems, you’re installing automated processes that run regardless of motivation, mood, or momentary willpower. You’re not deciding whether to go for a walk; the walk is simply what happens at 6:00 PM. It’s not a choice; it’s architecture.
This is particularly crucial for managing stress. Stress doesn’t respond well to aspirational goal-setting. Your nervous system doesn’t care about your ten-year plan. It cares about what’s happening right now, in this moment, in this body. And it responds to consistent, repeated signals of safety and regulation that come from well-designed daily systems.
The professionals who successfully manage stress don’t have better goals; they have better systems. They’ve designed their days to include regular nervous system regulation, boundary protection, and restorative practices that happen automatically, not aspirationally.
The Ripple Effect: When Your Systems Change, Everything Changes
Here’s something rather wonderful that emerges from systems-based change: it compounds. Not just for you, but for everyone in your orbit.
When Catherine Whitmore changed her systems – when she installed hard stops on her workday, created phone-free evenings, and built in regular stress-relief practices – something unexpected happened. Her daughter started talking to her again. Not because Catherine set a goal to “connect more with daughter,” but because she’d created systems that made connection possible.
Her team became more efficient. Not because she demanded it, but because she modeled sustainable working practices. When the leader stops sending emails at midnight, the culture of midnight emails gradually dissolves.
Your systems don’t just change you; they change the environment around you. They give others permission to build better systems. They model what sustainable success actually looks like. And in a world where burnout is treated as a status symbol, this is quietly revolutionary.
This is the beginning not just of personal transformation, but of cultural transformation. When successful people stop martyring themselves on the altar of achievement, when they demonstrate that excellence and wellbeing aren’t mutually exclusive, they create possibility for everyone watching.
Your community – your family, your team, your industry – is observing your systems more than your goals. They’re learning from what you actually do, not what you say you’ll do. And when you shift from goals-based striving to systems-based living, you give everyone around you a different template for success.
A Writing Prompt to Explore Your Own Systems
Take twenty minutes with pen and paper (not your laptop – we’re after truth, not performance). Write honestly about these questions:
“What do my current daily systems actually create? Not what I wish they created or what they’re supposed to create, but what they actually, measurably produce in my life?”
“If an anthropologist studied my daily routines for a week, what would they conclude I value most? Would it match what I say I value?”
“What’s one small system I could change this week that would make the biggest difference to my stress levels?”
Don’t edit. Don’t make it pretty. Just write. The gap between what you discover and what you expected is where the work begins.
Further Reading: Five Unconventional Books on Systems
1. “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg
Not unconventional, but essential. Duhigg explains the neuroscience of habit formation with the clarity of someone who actually wants you to understand, not just buy his book. If you’re going to build better systems, you need to understand how habits work at a biological level.
2. “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny Odell
This isn’t a productivity book; it’s an anti-productivity book, which is precisely why stressed high achievers need it. Odell argues that doing nothing is actually doing something profound. Your systems need to include deliberate non-productivity, and this book explains why.
3. “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman
Ostensibly about product design, this book is actually about how systems either support or sabotage human behaviour. Norman’s insights about design apply perfectly to designing your life systems. If your systems make the right behaviour difficult and the wrong behaviour easy, you’ll consistently choose wrong. This book teaches you to design better.
4. “Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Pang makes the evidence-based case that rest isn’t the absence of work; it’s a different kind of work. For people who’ve built systems around constant productivity, this book offers permission and practical strategies for building rest into your daily architecture.
5. “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman
Burkeman does something radical: he tells you that you’ll never get it all done, so you might as well stop trying and focus on what matters. This book demolishes the fantasy of perfect time management and replaces it with systems for living meaningfully within human limitations.
P.S. My own book, “Embracing Change – in 10 minutes a day,“ offers daily practices for building systems that support life transitions. It’s designed for people who don’t have hours to dedicate to transformation but do have ten minutes to start building better daily architecture.
Real Voices: Testimonials from the Field
Sarah, Technology Director, Camino de Santiago Retreat Participant:
“I arrived in France with my usual plan: set big goals for the week, have some sort of epiphany, return transformed. Dr. Montagu very politely dismantled this fantasy by day two. We weren’t there to set goals; we were there to notice our systems. Walking the Camino between Eauze and Nogaro, I realized I’d built my entire life around systems of ‘more.’ More emails, more meetings, more proving myself. The mindfulness practices with the Friesian horses showed me something profound: they respond to your nervous system, not your achievements. You can’t convince a horse you’re calm whilst your body is screaming stress. I came home and changed three small daily systems. It’s been eight months. Those three systems have changed everything else. Not because I set better goals, but because I finally built better architecture.”
Jennifer, Marketing Consultant, Virtual Storytelling Circle Member:
“I joined Dr. Montagu’s virtual storytelling circle thinking I’d share my professional successes. Instead, I found myself telling the truth about how exhausted I was. The circle held space for that truth without trying to fix it or minimise it. Over six months, listening to others’ stories and telling my own, I began to see patterns in how I’d structured my life. The circle became a system itself – a regular practice of reflection and connection that made me accountable to something other than productivity. It’s helped me identify which systems serve me and which ones I’ve been maintaining out of habit or fear. Sometimes you need witnesses to see yourself clearly.”
For those ready to build new systems through structured support, my Purpose Pivot Protocol online course offers a framework for redesigning your life architecture after crisis or transition. Because sometimes you need more than insight; you need a system for building systems.
The Purpose Pivot Protocol – drawing inspiration from the Camino de Santiago, this transformative course guides you through a proven framework to recalibrate your authentic purpose and create a meaningful and fulfilling next act. Get immediate access
Five FAQs: The Questions Everyone Asks (And the Answers That Actually Help)
Q1: If I focus on systems instead of goals, how do I know if I’m making progress?
A: You measure systems by consistency, not outcomes. Ask: “Am I following the system?” not “Have I achieved the goal?” Progress is showing up daily, not arriving at a destination. Ironically, this approach often produces better outcomes than goal-obsession because you’re actually doing the work rather than just planning to do the work.
Q2: This sounds lovely, but I have actual deadlines and deliverables. Can’t I have both goals and systems?
A: Yes, but reverse the hierarchy. Goals tell you which direction to point your systems. Systems are how you actually move. Have goals, but don’t rely on them for transformation. Build systems, and trust those systems to generate outcomes. Your deadline is the direction; your daily work routine is the vehicle.
Q3: What if my work environment makes good systems impossible? I can’t control when my boss emails.
A: You can’t control inputs, but you can control your response systems. You can’t stop your boss emailing at 11 PM, but you can build a system where you don’t check email after 8 PM. The pushback you fear? It rarely materialises. And when it does, it’s usually a sign that your workplace systems are toxic and you’re enabling them by not setting boundaries.
Q4: How long does it take to build a new system?
A: Research suggests habit formation takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days, with an average of 66 days. But here’s the secret: you don’t need to wait 66 days to benefit. You benefit immediately from following the system, even before it becomes automatic. Start today. Notice improvements within a week. Solidify the habit over months.
Q5: I’ve tried building better habits before and failed. Why would this be different?
A: Because you probably tried to change your habits without changing your systems. You set goals without redesigning your environment, schedule, or support structures. This time, start smaller. Change one system. Design your environment to make the right choice easy and the wrong choice difficult. Build accountability into the architecture. And be patient with the process whilst being disciplined with the practice.
Conclusion: The Quiet Revolution of Better Systems
You don’t need more impressive goals. You’ve proved you can set those. What you need is the courage to build systems that actually support the life you claim to want, not just the achievements you think you should pursue.
The transformation from goals-obsessed to systems-focused isn’t flashy. There’s no dramatic before-and-after. It’s quieter than that. It’s waking up one Tuesday and realizing you slept through the night. It’s noticing you’ve had three conversations with your child this week that didn’t involve logistics. It’s discovering you can’t remember the last time your hands shook.
James Clear was right: you fall to the level of your systems. But here’s the hope in that statement – if you can fall to that level, you can also rise from it. Not by setting loftier goals, but by building better daily architecture.
Your goals might be magnificent. But your systems? Your systems will determine whether you’re still here to achieve them, and whether the achievement was worth the cost.
The question isn’t whether you can change. It’s whether you’re ready to stop trying to goal-set your way to transformation and start building the systems that make transformation inevitable.
Your future self is counting on you to design better. Not achieve more. Just design better.
The rest, as they say, will follow.
Take the Next Step: Camino de Santiago Stress Relief Retreat
Sometimes the most effective way to build new systems is to step entirely out of your current ones.
My Camino de Santiago walking retreats in the stunning southwest of France, between Eauze and Nogaro, offer something you can’t find in your office or even in your home: complete disruption of the systems that are quietly destroying you, combined with intentional design of systems that actually serve you.
You’ll walk sections of this ancient pilgrimage route, but this isn’t about religious devotion or athletic achievement. It’s about creating the space to notice your patterns, identify the systems running your life, and begin building new ones that prioritise your wellbeing alongside your success.
Each day includes guided mindfulness and meditation practices specifically designed for stress management. These aren’t abstract concepts; they’re practical nervous system regulation techniques that become portable systems you can integrate into your daily life when you return home.
The storytelling circles – facilitated in the presence of my Friesian horses – offer something profound: witnessed truth-telling without judgment. The horses serve as remarkable mindfulness facilitators, responding to your authentic nervous system state rather than your carefully crafted professional persona. They don’t care about your job title. They respond to your presence, your breath, your genuine state of being. It’s remarkably clarifying.
You’ll walk through the gentle hills and vineyards of Gascony, sleep in an ancient farmhouse that balances comfort with simplicity, eat regional cuisine that nourishes rather than merely fuels, and most importantly, create space for the kind of deep reflection that’s impossible in your current environment.
This retreat isn’t about escaping your life; it’s about redesigning it. You’ll leave with specific, practical systems you can implement immediately, a renewed nervous system, and perhaps most valuable, evidence that you can actually live differently.
The Camino has been changing lives for over a thousand years. Not because it’s magical, but because walking for days strips away everything non-essential and shows you what actually matters. And what actually matters is rarely another goal. It’s usually better systems.
Ready to build better? CLICK HERE to learn more about upcoming retreat dates and begin your journey toward sustainable success.
10 Powerful Life Lessons Learned While Walking the Camino de Santiago – a free guide filled with 10 not just “quaint anecdotes” or Instagram-worthy moments (though there are plenty of those) but real transformations from real people who walked the same insight-giving trail you might want to walk one day – Subscribe to my monthly newsletter to Download the Guide
About Dr. Margaretha Montagu
MBChB, MRCGP, NLP Master Practitioner, Medical Hypnotherapist, Life Transition Coach
With twenty years as a GP specializing in stress management, fifteen years hosting transformational Camino retreats, and eight published non-fiction books on divorce, loss, illness, and crisis navigation, Dr. Montagu brings both medical expertise and hard-won personal wisdom to her work. Her approach combines evidence-based stress management with practical systems design, helping high achievers build lives they don’t need to escape from. With over thirty guest testimonials and a reputation for warm, no-nonsense guidance, she’s become known for telling successful people the uncomfortable truths they need to hear, with enough compassion that they can actually hear them.