“Excellence is a process.” - Nick Saban
 
“What gets measured gets managed.” - Peter Drucker
 
We all need a system to get things done. Like many other things in life, when it comes to exercise, fitness, and training, systems work. What does it mean to have a system? It means that there’s a certain order to what happening. The order, or system, can be complex or it can be very simple. A system might have several levels, all interacting with each other in a complex way. Or a system might be a couple of simple guidelines put together. If you apply various guidelines or rules of thumb, to an organized approach to reaching a goal, then you have a system. Systems thinking is a “slow” way of thinking in the sense that it forces us to slow down and be methodical about planning out what we’re going to do. 
 
In his excellent book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman writes about the critical differences between fast and slow thinking. We need to do both. We need good instincts, or fast thinking, because thinking fast often keeps us safe and because we only have so much time to deliberate. We can’t think slow all the time because we’d never get anything done. On the other hand, our society does not value slow thinking like it should and slow thinking determines how our lives turn out. Slow thinking is about settling down and really planning, turning off distractions and focusing. Creating systems requires slow and deliberate reflection. And this is the part we have a hard time doing, because we live in an instant gratification culture. Buy this, hurry here or there, eat this, desire this, consume that, become angry impulsively at this tweet or that post, and the list goes on. Fast thinking is instinctual we are groomed and trained by the culture to think fast. 
 
Slow thinking is hard work at first.  But in the end, slow thinking resulting in systems is a kind of shortcut. Once we set up the system, then we can switch to fast thinking. Once a system is in place then all we have to do is follow it, and then periodically slow down and re-evaluate the system. But once a system is in place the work and effort can begin. Another great example is a business.  Even though I’m a sole proprietor, I have a system for how I operate.  I track leads, lead conversions, marketing channels, revenue, appointments, and many other factors, and I have entire systems for each aspect of running a small business and subsystems under the primary ones.  

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​“The human spirit must prevail over technology.” – Albert Einstein
 
Technology for its own sake is at its best a harmless amusement and pleasant waste of time, or at its worst a nihilistic and dangerous dead-end.  With exercise, training, and fitness, technology is rarely life-threatening like nuclear bombs, but it can waste a lot of time and energy.  Most crucially, it can also conflate means with ends.  Technology is not the end goal, but a possible way to reach it!  Technology should serve its master, not the other way around.  Let me illustrate with an all too often example.
 
Unfortunately you occasionally see the ugly side of human nature and technology meet in a gym environment, when trainees fight and argue over limited fitness equipment like treadmills, which is especially repugnant when perfectly good roads are available right outside the door to run on.  I’ve seen it many times.  You’d be surprised how capable of nasty behavior are those overworked sleep-deprived lawyers or suburban moms, phone in hand, earbuds in, yoga pants in place, and trendy running shoes on, when someone takes the treadmill they want!  The problem with this infrequent but inevitably recurring scenario is that the ends- getting in shape and being healthy- are being confused and subjugated to the means- the expensive and high-tech machines called treadmills that have everything technological from Facebook, to YouTube, to regular TV, to heart rate on their screens.  
 
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, especially with technology.  Use it, but use it in a smart way which makes your workouts more efficient, effective, and fun.  Or don’t use it at all.

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If you're new to my blog, then welcome and I'm glad you're here. I write about all sorts of health issues- fitness, nutrition and wellness.  This post is part of a series of long-form essays summarizing the classic work by Robert Nisbet, "The Quest for Community", please see previous posts for the prior essays.  

I've been focusing on this because community health has such a big impact on individual health.  Just turn on the news if you don't believe me!

​In Chapter 3, entitled “The Problem of Community”, Nisbet dives deeper into defining what exactly the problem constitutes.  What does it mean and what exactly is the nature of the problem?  Nisbet is a talented and bright writer but I found this chapter difficult to summarize.  Entire books could be written elaborating on many of the points he brings up about the problem of community, particularly from a historical point.  He states that the problem of community is perennial, yet that our age is new and unique.  One of the main points he keeps bringing up is that there is a separation between function and ends.  With further reflection, I
 
I’ve found this to be particularly interesting.   Our goal will determine what our actions should be.  What is the ultimate purpose of life? What are we aiming for?  What are we trying to accomplish?  Without that answered we cannot fully express what we should be doing and more importantly, what roles we should be playing within a community to achieve the ends.  Remember community defined:
 
“The product of people working together on problems, of autonomous and collective fulfillment of internal objectives, and of the experience of living under the codes of authority which have been set in large degree by the persons involved.”  
 
Nisbet keeps coming back to function, roles, and authority. The community is defined by purpose, and so separated from any coherent purpose, people are often alienated from any life of significance.  They have functions, maybe make money, companionship, entertainment, and amusement, but lack an ends towards which they are moving, like playing a game without any way to win or putting together a puzzle that doesn’t fit.  This makes life become cynical and focused on utility and technological maximization instead of achieving ends.  

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When I saw Big Ben for the for the first time, towering above the Thames River, I was awestruck and it became one of my fondest memories of getting to travel abroad.  Big Ben is the nickname for the clock at the Palace of Westminster in London and its featured on t-shirts, coffee cups, and countless other souvenirs because of its iconic status.  There’s nothing quite like gazing on a structure, well-built and pleasing to the eye, for the very first time, especially when it’s in an ancient city like London surrounded by other notable achievements in architecture like Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tower of London.  
 
I’ve always enjoyed looking at beautiful buildings and marveling at the construction techniques and engineering capabilities of the building sciences.   That’s not that unusual, we all like looking in awe at attractive things.  I’ve been even more interested though in finding out what makes a building popular, lasting, and one that people enjoy using, all at the same time.  
 
I’ve seen the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the Empire State Building in New York City, Soldier Field of the Chicago Bears, Ely Cathedral in England, and countless other iconic and well-built older structures all over the US, Europe, and Latin America.  They aren’t exactly famous like those places, but I’ve seen more towns and cities that I could mention which have beautiful homes, relaxing and bucolic town squares, and pleasant plazas with parks in the middle.   This latter form of “Main Street” architecture seems to be the US’s strong suit. 
 
The more I studied architecture and sought it out as something worth learning about it, the more I realized, with quite a bit of surprise, how intertwined it is with the human body.  As a matter of fact, I’ve never even seen or heard of anyone discussing the correlation between physical fitness of the body on one hand, and successful architecture on the other.  It turns out though, the two fields are closely interrelated. 
 
After reading Tom Wolfe’s book, “From Bauhaus to Our House” about the pretensions, ideology, and flawed approach to modern building practices,  I became even more interested in what was going on with architecture.  So I took some online courses, read several books, did some drawings, gazed over photos I’d taken all over the world, and even worked through an online course offered at Yale University called “Roman Architecture.”  What I discovered was fascinating:
 
Successful architecture is based on the symmetry and proportion of the human body. 
 
Vitruvius, a Roman architect and engineer was one of the first to leave a record of his principles in a multi-volume book called “De Architectura,” written around the year 40 BC.  Based on his expertise in human anatomy and many other fields, he taught that there were 3 essential attributes in the field of architecture:

1. Firmitas – Strength, Solidity, Firmness
2. Utilitas – Commodity, Comfort, Serviceability
3. Venustas – Delight, Beauty

 
The famous work by Leonardo da Vinci, “Vitruvian Man” is based on his idea that the human body is perfectly proportioned and that buildings should be as well.  The drawing implies perfect symmetry emanating out from the navel, and reflected the universe as a whole:

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