Systematic Behvior for life...

This last week I spent four days in class learning about TOGAF. For those of you who haven't been engulfed in a barrage of talk on Enterprise Architecture(EA) over the past 6 months, TOGAF stands for "The Open Group Architecture Framework". This isn't a post about EA but I wanted to capture and reflect on a statement that the instructor, Bill Estrem, used sometime during the first day of class. When advocating the need for EA Bill shared the following statement:

"Only systematic behavior yields success."

In the realm of EA I'll take this statement at it's face value and accept it as a general truism but as I thought about this statement over the course of the week I began to ask myself if this truism may also apply to life in general. Think about it.

1. To raise kids, I have two boys, I have to be consistent and think about how I am going to raise them so that I and my wife are on the same page. Once on the same page my wife and I have to act in a common ( read systematic) way to train them to become the young boys and eventually men that we want them to be
   
2. When I used to run and cycle a lot my times and distances were much better when I followed a systematic training and dieting plan
3. I never pay off my credit cards if I don't make and follow a plan for doing so
4. My garden doesn't grow if I don't prepare the ground, plant the seeds, and water and care for my growing plants

Even as a computer programmer who's supposed to think and dream in binary I found that I initially recoiled at the idea of being more systematic in my life. "Why I like to be artist and creative." I told myself. But as I looked at my life I notice that those moments when I had the most success occurred when my behavior was more systematic.


Perhaps our creativity is unleashed in designing the system and our success is found in systematically following through on our creativity?