How Do Your Personal Systems Stand Up To Life's Curveballs?

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” 

- James Clear

I live a life driven by self imposed routine and structure all pointed towards goals and becoming my Future Self. 

My days are bookended by a morning routine called “Pre-game planning” and an evening routine called a “Victory Lap.” 

In between those bookends, I focus primarily on my important pillars of health, relationships, faith and the Argent Alpha community.

This structure is sustainable and enjoyable for me but what happens when life throws you a curveball?

That’s when the opening quote comes into play. You are only as good as your systems.

Travel is a big curveball for men. Whether it is business or personal, their performance “on the road” tends to suffer.

Earlier this week, we took an unplanned trip. In less than 12 hours, my planned out week was completely disrupted and I spent the next 4 days in another city.

How did my systems hold up?

First, let’s review what systems are.

Systems - A Quick Review

Your goal is your desired outcome. Goals provide direction and purpose.

Your systems are the collection of daily habits that will move you towards your goals. Systems are repeatable processes designed to achieve specific outcomes. They focus on the processes and actions you take daily and you create a path towards your desired outcome by consistently following these processes. Your systems are the core of what truly drives you towards your goals and success.

At Argent Alpha, we created a framework to leverage these concepts. Our overall system is called the Alpha 5 and we create systems in five areas:

• Mindset

• Sleep

• Nutrition

• Fitness

• Hydration

We have an accountability system we refer to as R.A.D. - Recurring Accountability Drivers - which measures performance in the 5 areas above on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

So how did my systems hold up to the curveball of an unplanned trip? Let’s review my Alpha 5 and how they fared this week.

Alpha 5 Stress Test

Maintaining your personal systems in a structured environment when your level of control is high should be easy to do. 

What happens when you stress test your systems? I’m going to look at how travel “attacked” my systems and see how I did and then look for areas of improvement.

Mindset

My main goal for my mindset when I travel is to start each day with “pre-game planning” and set my intentions for the day. This is the “minimum effective dose” for my mindset practice. I brought my journal and one of the books from my morning routine. This scaled down version of my morning routine is enough to help me maintain my practice and helps me approach each day with intention, something that I’ve found is easy to lose sight of when traveling. I also journaled on both legs of the flight. There is a peace that comes with flying (if you stay off the wi-fi) and I took advantage of it.

Assessment: Strong. Each morning I was able to spend the necessary time setting intentions for the day and was able to do some journaling and reading. I checked the box for my minimum effective dose for mindset and the process paid dividends each day. I always felt I was “owning” my day vs it owning me.

Sleep

Part of my travel go bag includes a sleep mask and mouth tape. We stayed in a great hotel but the designers in all their wisdom built in a night light in the bathroom that has a back lit blue light that cannot be shut off. The door to the bathroom has a frosted window so light shines through. Seriously, blue light for a night light…hotel designers have obviously not been following Dave Asprey or Andrew Huberman! But the sleep mask, mouth tape, melatonin and magnesium all saved the day. Average sleep score while traveling per Oura was 90 (oddly enough 2 points higher than my average).

Assessment: Strong. My baseline sleep system helped me withstand the travel stressor. 

Nutrition

 The main levers of nutrition per Peter Attia are:

1. Quality

2. Quantity

3. Timing

We packed our nutritional go bag with grass fed beef sticks, protein bars, nuts and electrolytes. It was enough to bridge the nutritional gap that comes with travel and not succumb to the crap in the airport and the airplane.

No matter how hard you try, you simply cannot replicate the food quality and preparation you can achieve at home when you are traveling. The best way I’ve found to counteract this is to focus on the simple meal ordering. Avoid “fancy” dishes that have lots of ingredients and go with simply prepared protein and veggies. For example “I’ll have grilled salmon with a double side of steamed broccoli” or “3 scrambled eggs with bacon.” Ask about the oils used (ideally, the restaurant avoids seed oils but that is unlikely) and don’t be afraid to request your food being prepared with avocado, coconut or olive oil.

The lever I will focus on while traveling is quantity. If you can eat less food, you’ll do less damage. Without a plan or intention around quantity, I tend to go off the rails very easily.

The last lever Attia recommends is timing. If you have experience with intermittent fasting, lean on that experience while traveling. Stop eating early and start eating later. Compressing your eating window to 6-8 hours combined with a lower quantity of food will get you the best results.

How did I do on this trip? I compressed my eating window (intermittent fasting) which is my go to method for limiting damage while  traveling. I maintained a good (not optimal) level of protein intake.
We visited our kids and grandkids while on the trip and they live one block away from Parkway Pizza so we did enjoy some great pizza. Other meals were reasonable in terms of quantity and quality of ingredients. Overall, I would say my systems held up okay.

Assessment: Good. My baseline nutrition systems held up to travel but there is room for improvement.

Fitness

My overall standard for fitness is to beat the activity target set for me each day by my Oura ring. Within that standard, I have targets for strength training, cardio and mobility. 

The minimum effective dose for fitness that I follow when traveling is the Oura activity score. I don’t worry about hitting specific targets for strength, cardio or mobility while traveling; I view these as a bonus while on the road.

All this being said, I did get in three great workouts while on this trip.

The first one was in our hotel gym. I did a circuit of pushups and pull-ups and when I completed those movements I moved on to a circuit hitting biceps and triceps. I chose these 4 movements due to the features of the gym at the hotel. It had the typical cardio machines (which I don’t usually use, I would rather be outside for cardio) and a set of dumbbells and a weight machine that had a pull-up bar. When you travel, you need the ability to improvise based on what’s available. If there was no gym, I would either do a bodyweight workout in the hotel room or outside.

The second workout was helping our kids with a yard project. We dug up timbers, carried them to the alley, broke up dirt with a space, hauled dirt and broke a good sweat. Throw in some good physical activity with my nearly 3 year old grandson and you have a great workout. The yard work burned the most calories of the three workouts!

The last workout was with 3 of my fellow Argent Alpha brothers. We warmed up and did some great mobility work on our glutes, hips and hamstrings. We then did a team workout of pulling weighted sleds, cleaning heavy sandbags, carrying those sandbags, weighted step ups, bar hangs, planks, and mountain climbers. We did leg lifts for “rest” (Our trainer, Brock Harling, has a different interpretation of the word rest than most of us).

Assessment: Strong. Travel had no impact on my fitness standard. I averaged a 97/100 for activity per my Oura ring and exceeded my activity target each day.

Hydration

My standard for hydration is 140 ounces per day, which is 70% of my body weight. When I’m not traveling, this is an easy number to achieve each day using my 25 ounce reusable water bottle.

When traveling, I need to increase my awareness for hydration otherwise I tend to fall short. I bring the same 25 ounce bottle with me and I aim for being at 60% of my target by noon and at my goal by 7:00 pm. It’s easier to lose track when you are on the road so paying attention to the color of your urine is important. Aiming for a light straw color is the goal. If you see a neon yellow color, you know you are dehydrated. I stayed at or near the straw color during the trip.

Assessment: Good. Overall, my systems held up but the yard work day was borderline. Increased physical activity and a slightly lower level of water intake were the culprits. I course-corrected the next day and was back on track.

Summary

This trip did not take me off course from my goals. My systems were tested and stood up. I identified two areas that need some shoring up: Nutrition and hydration. I understand the underlying drivers of what needs to be done to improve these systems.

And here’s the best part: I had a great time on this trip AND stuck to my “travel adjusted standards.” It is so easy when you travel to say “screw it, I’ll get back on track when I get home.” That was my former self.

Three and a half years ago I had no systems. Actually, I did but didn’t know it. They were default systems. And with default systems, any travel involved an increase in calories consumed (food and alcohol), a reduction in calories burned and an overall let down after the trip.

I have used designed systems since then. My scores in my personal Alpha 5 have all gone up since moving from default to designed systems. Health has improved, fat has decreased, muscle mass has increased, sleep is measurably better and my overall mindset is more optimistic and growth oriented.

If I can do it, you can too.

Call To Action

A few things I would like you to consider.

1. You have systems in your life whether you know it or not. They are either default systems or designed systems. Choose designed systems.

2. Design basic systems in your life to move you towards your goals.

3. When you travel, adjust your systems, don’t put them on hold.

4. Connect your systems to your goals. You spend 99% of your time living in your systems (the other 1% is when you achieve your goal). 

5. Hold yourself accountable by measuring your compliance with your systems. Systems aren’t systems unless you follow them. You don’t know if you are following them unless you measure things.

6. Adjust your systems periodically based on results.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” - James Clear

Note: This week’s edition of Harder To Kill was unplanned, just like the trip I took. I switched from my scheduled newsletter to this one in the spirit of rolling with life’s curveballs. I hope it inspires you to take action and design systems to help improve your life.

Argent Alpha has designed systems you can easily adopt to help you achieve your goals. Join the dozens of Men over 50 who have changed their lives by improving their systems. It works.