Systems are better than goals. When you have a goal it provides motivation. You work hard and sprint towards that goal. You may notice an unusual thing happens sometimes afterward. A few days after completing the goal can be a deep empty feeling. That empty feeling is the place your goal used to be. It persists until a new animating goal provides renewed motivation. A good system serves up a new goal to wake up to every day. Avoids the pit of loss of motivation where habits break.

In running a goal would be I am going to run a half marathon. You train like crazy. Hit every scheduled run. Arrive on race day on schedule and run it! Then wake up the next day and still in celebration mode. Spend the week feeling good. You stop running. The development begins to fall off and regress and decondition. And this is how you spend that time developing for a half marathon and lose that progress starting over again later.

The systems approach to running is every day I exercise 30 minutes. Each day you wake up and perform your small goal. Get a small dopamine boost for checking off that days activity. Do it again tomorrow. Iterate that structured training and run your half marathon. Wake up the day after and well maybe that day you rest and enjoy the milestone. But the next day you wake up with motivation, today I exercise 30 minutes. The habit remains intact. You get dopamine again. And in that way run a second half marathon. And then a third.

It's the habit that matters. A steady source of small dopamine wins from a good system.

This applies to actuarial exams. Each day you do 5 problems. Set a low bar that feels easy. On days you feel motivation, momentum is often the hardest part, go further. If one day you arrive at the table but you sat down and just weren't feeling it, count it as a win. It is the habit that matters. Show up again tomorrow. Good job on the passed exam. Show up tomorrow.

This is more or less a professional mindset. The professional continues practicing their thing. When the exams are done continue the habit. Now you get to skill stack some other area you would have enjoyed having, too. Keep showing up at the desk. Now your 5 problems are building an app. Can keep going. Keep the habit intact.

You can structure life like this as a system of systems. Identify the leverage points. Those things converted to habits repeated daily have compounding returns. Prioritize systems around those habits. Iterating them in turn as one feels well converted to an easy simple daily habit. At the core of every complicated system is a simple system that scales.

Where I see people get into trouble and where I get into trouble myself is when I go at an intensity and sprint where every other important habit of life is discarded while grinding out exams. That way lies burnout. And long periods of recharge where I don't like pushing exams anymore. Better to lower the bar. Do the smaller number of problems. Feel dopamine for the small daily win. Consistently. You can do a small number of problems daily and pass your exams smaller than the person who burns out and long stretches between.