Resolutions without systems will fail. Here’s what to do about it.

We all make lofty resolutions — and they set us up for failure.

That’s because we set resolutions without systems. The problem is that anything without a system will only succeed through willpower. And willpower has limits.

Take creating an article and publishing it every day.

That’s actually two daily resolutions: creating and publishing. If you combine them, missing either one means missing both. And there’s enough points of failure with any daily process that something’s bound to go wrong eventually.

Talk about pressure!

Even worse, those two resolutions involve fundamentally different actions. Creation involves thought. Publishing is mostly process.

Here’s the thing — you can automate process but not thought.

Which means you’re far better off separating the two resolutions. So, create one article and publish another. Your quality will even improve — as Dickie Bush from Ship 30 points out, editing is best separated from creation.

And by making the publishing process asynchronous you can create a system.

Create, add to the backlog of completed work — your buffer — then edit later, then schedule to publish later still. Which also means your first publication should only happen once your buffer is big enough.

That way when the worst happens and you miss a day, your buffer has your back.