January 2025: New Beginnings Using a Systems Thinking Approach
Turning Resolutions into Systems for Ensured Success
Well, here we go again…🎉
January 1st. 2025, a blank slate full of promise and potential. Like many of you, I’m embracing this new year reflecting on my goals and aspirations for the year ahead. I’m happy to say this year does feel different than the rest (for real). Last year I did the hardest thing, which was to simply begin writing and putting my thoughts and content out there to build a community. This year I wanted to kick it off a bit different than other years, instead of making full of ambition to-do lists, I have decided to stop chasing motivation and instead take a different approach: Systems Thinking.
To me (a former Systems Engineer by trade), Systems Thinking is all about seeing the big picture and understanding the interconnected parts of a system as a whole, recognizing patterns, and identifying system interfaces, context, scope, and boundaries. I plan to develop this mindset through the year to create sustainable progress.
The Problem with Resolutions
When it comes to creative projects like writing on Substack, we often approach them with enthusiasm but little structure. It’s easy to get swept up in the initial excitement of launching a newsletter, brainstorming topics, and hitting “Publish” on your first posts. However, without a system, that initial burst of motivation can die out.
This is the creative equivalent of a failed gym resolution—you start strong, but without a sustainable system, you’re left wondering where it all went wrong and feel discouraged if you are not seeing the results you were hoping to see.
I want to share my views of why Systems Thinking is important and how I will apply it to continue growing on my Substack journey.
A Systems Thinking Approach to Substack
Here are some core principles of Systems Thinking that I plan to implement this year on my Substack career.
Define the System’s Purpose: Every system has a purpose. Similarly, every publication I have serves a different purpose. I chose to write this piece here on The Thought Bazaar as one the main purpose of this newsletter is to foster conversations, ideas exchange and building a diverse community.
I plan to use this principle to ensure the content I write aligns with this vision in order to develop a cohesive voice and value for my readers.
Interconnected Parts: As many new writers might know by now, writing is the easy part. Creating content on Substack isn’t just writing posts, to be successful we must identify the other parts that make up a successful Substack solopreneur such as promotion, engagement, and feedback from other users. Identify which parts of your own system needs some tweak and strive to improve them as you continue your journey.
Additionally, it’s not uncommon for systems to be improved with the addition of new parts, therefore, use this principle to identify which new parts can be added to your newsletters and publications. For example, you can create digital products that align with your system’s purpose, incorporate new sections that tie-in to concepts you have explained in the past, how-to guides about how your system works, etc. The sky is the limit.
Feeback Loops: Every system has some sort of feedback mechanism, often we will find internal and external feedback loops. Some examples of internal feedback include asking yourself questions such as “Did I really enjoy writing a piece about X or Y subject?”, whereas external feedback can be analyzed using your own set of metrics such as the number of views, community engagement, comments received, etc.
As you continue growing your Substack career, identifying the optimal feedback loop for your content will be key for future success.
Boundaries and Context: Defining a System Context is essential; context matters because systems operate and depend within larger systems. For instance, last year I realized that I wanted to do two different things: create a newsletter where I write data-driven stories and find an avenue where I could express my thoughts, share the things I enjoy, consume, create, and learn from others.
I had a hard time trying to determine if the latter fit within the former. The Thought Bazaar was born due to the application of Systems Thinking and realizing that the boundaries and context of Visualytics did not cover my second desire. Don’t be afraid of starting a new publication if you feel you can’t fit a specific topic within an existing publication. The application of Systems Thinking will guarantee success to any other publication (or project) you want to start. The key point is to identify the boundaries of your products.
Adapt and Overcome: Systems are dynamic, regular evaluations and assessments of what’s working and what isn’t is very important to avoid stagnation and identify new features you can implement to your own system. Use this principle to schedule personal reviews to improve where your system might be failing, alternatively, you can even ask other writers or content creators to review your own system for you and gain a new perspective you might have not even thought about.
Your Turn: A Systems Thinking Challenge
As we hit the new year, I want to challenge you to apply Systems Thinking to your own personal projects and goals. I would love it if you can share your approach to the new year and your Substack journey, here are some questions you can ask yourself and others to promote a Systems Thinking approach:
How do you define the purpose of your system/publication?
How are you planning to leverage feedback loops to improve?
What tools do you use to map out boundaries and context of your project?
Let’s start a conversation. Share your thoughts, ideas, or challenges in the comments!
I’d love to hear if the lessons learned on this post will help you building a sustainable system for success this year, or perhaps you have and entirely different approach. Either way, I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
Love your approach to Systems Thinking—it’s such a game-changer for sustainable growth! I’m planning to take a similar route this year, inspired by James Clear’s idea of focusing on systems over goals. For me, it’s about building small, consistent habits around writing, engagement, and feedback loops—those tiny daily wins that keep the momentum going without feeling like I’m chasing the moon. Looking forward to seeing how your system evolves!
Great thinking! And a very good conversation topic.
Substack is indeed a system, but I wonder if the different parts are identifiable, or if there are hidden objects and camouflaged connections. If everything is as it seems, that is, and if it stays the same — long enough for describing it.
The next question is then if it is possible to tweak the system in any way, or if the knowledge about it only can be used to pick the path to traverse on your journey through it. Is Substack like a book with many threads, such as they are sometimes made for children? A Fun game. Or if it is a playing field where your own actions have an influence on the very shape of the game.
Describing the world is definitely good for seeing your own place in it, and this alone is valuable. In fact, the lack of seeing your position in the game could be a reason for quitting a job.
Making this understanding actionable would then be the tip of the iceberg. A smaller part, but the most visible, the one you can keep drawing up for yourself and others when you want to explain your strategy.
Looking forward to seeing what people are thinking about this. Maybe most participants in this game just enjoy the thrill of never really knowing how it works, and they would be less happy for knowing why they are not moving (fast enough) or whatever is their wish? And knowing how it works, may mean to them that they know that they cannot win — which could be rather demotivating to some.
Social media thrive on the users not knowing what is going on. That translates, in our primitive brains, to a world of opportunities. A world in which we can win.
But social media is not meant for everybody to win. Rather, to let a few become big winners and very visibly so, another few become lower level winners, earning money and getting known. But the majority of users are there to feed the system with their work, money, and excitement that they spread around to attract more participants.
Another aspect: What would happen if we all knew what it would take to get thousands of paid subscribers and write exactly enough of the right kind for this setup to work on a stable basis?
Well, then everybody would do it, and the system wouldn't work anymore. It would become overloaded, gamed against its preconditions.
"Bruce Almighty", a movie with Jim Carrey, indicated that same problem when Carrey, having become God, let everybody win the lottery. Couldn't work, as there wasn't enough money for everybody to get the big win.
I think that you will find, that social media is a chance system. It is difficult to map, but if you do it, you will see some serious feedback-loops in play, basically on every action ever taken by anyone. The system will adapt to the knowledge available in the system, and therefore become increasingly difficult to win over — plus, the whole system and its careful mapping can, at any time, be pushed aside by the hidden factors: the acts of the system owners.