One of the ways of structuring my life has increasingly become to focus on systems. Especially when I was younger, my main focus was on setting goals. Implicitly I believed that by setting goals, I would magically achieve them simply by sheer willpower. When my goals became larger, more effort consuming and taking longer, I started to see that my progress to my goals was much slower than what I anticipated or what I had experienced when I was younger. I realized that I needed to find ways in which I continuously chip away at my goals. For example, when I decided that I wanted to get my hunting license, the first step is to pass the theory test. The material for this test is quite elaborate and includes well over a dozen different parts, ranging from the ecology of a forest to the laws and regulations associated with hunting and owning weapons. It is hundreds upon hundreds of pages of text. The system that I used is to use a few hours every Saturday and Sunday to simply study. Related to work, I supervise 10+ PhD candidates. Rather than randomly responding to requests from them and booking meetings whenever I feel the need, we have a system. Every Monday afternoon at 13:00 we have our group meeting, followed by individual meetings with everyone who needs it. It’s very efficient and yet very effective. Because it’s a system. So, as a reflection for today: where do you have a chaotic, stressful situation in your life for which you could introduce a system to systematically work on it?