“I have ADHD. The systems I’ve built for myself turned out to work remarkably well for people who don’t.”

“The most common reason a good system stops working has nothing to do with the system.”

In the last two posts I’ve made the case that work systems fail because of design, not discipline — and walked through the principles that make a system lightweight enough to actually survive real life.

This is where it gets concrete.

In my last post, I made the case that work systems fail not because of how you work, but because of how they’re designed.

That reframe leads naturally to a question: if the standard approach doesn’t work, what does?

The problem isn’t you — it’s a mismatch between system design and real-world conditions. If you’ve ever abandoned a productivity system and blamed yourself, this is for you.