The Personal Success System
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Jodie Cook's claim is that everyone already has a personal success system — a repeatable sequence they unconsciously followed for every achievement they're genuinely proud of — they just haven't named it. You find yours by reverse-engineering your proudest wins (the secretly-proud ones, not the ones you think should count), tracing the method from start to finish for each, and looking for the pattern across them. The pattern may be weird and highly specific: a particular coffee shop, a particular person, a particular kind of event. Once named, it becomes a reusable engine you deliberately point at the next goal rather than a lucky accident you hope repeats. Cook's own system is: set the intention, speak to someone who's done it, ask how they did it, extract a method, split that method into a daily half-hour, and keep going until it happens.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
List what you're secretly most proud of
Write down the achievements you're genuinely proud of — Cook stresses these are not the things you think you should be most proud of, but the ones you're really secretly most proud of.
Pro tip Cook's prompt to Ali was to name the top one thing he'd ever achieved that he's super proud of.
- 2
Reverse-engineer each one start to finish
For each win, reconstruct exactly what you did from the very start to the finish to make it happen — where the idea came from, what conditions you were in, what you did first, who was involved, how it launched.
- 3
Do it with multiple wins, not one
One achievement gives you an anecdote. Cook is explicit that you do this with multiple things, because the system only becomes visible when you compare several reconstructions.
Watch out A single data point can't distinguish your repeatable method from one lucky sequence.
- 4
Find the patterns, however weird
Look for what the reconstructions have in common. Cook says find those patterns whatever they are, however weird — it might be that everything you've ever achieved on a really cool level always involved this one person, or this one coffee shop.
Pro tip Extend the pattern-hunt to your filters as well as your actions — Cook suggests the ideas you rejected in your journal probably share characteristics too, and that's a system in itself.
- 5
Name your unique resources and unfair advantage
Figure out what your unique resources are, what your unfair advantage is, and where you're somehow weirdly placed to act because of the resources or people around you.
- 6
Deliberately point the system at the next goal
Go back to those people and those places on purpose and replicate the sequence against a new ambition, scaling the inputs where you can.
Pro tip Cook tested hers on writing a book and getting a publisher — she followed the exact same process and it just worked.
- 7
Notice when you stop following your own system
Once named, the system becomes a diagnostic. When a project is stalling, check whether you've abandoned the sequence that has always worked for you in favour of doing it 'properly'.
Watch out Ali's live example: with a head of product, competitor analysis and a six-month process, a course he believes he could build in a weekend hadn't shipped.
In the wild
Cook describes a friend called Shona who runs a business called Perfect English Grammar. Shona's personal success system is going to events: every single time she goes to one, she meets someone, gets an idea, something happens — and in the six months afterwards the business doubles. It has now happened three times. Because she knows what her system is, she can apply it going forward deliberately: go to bigger and better events, take the crux of the system, and keep applying it rather than waiting for the doubling to happen by chance.
→ Business doubled three separate times off the same repeated input.
Cook walks Ali through his own wins. The first YouTuber Academy cohort began as an idea while journaling with pen and paper in a Cambridge Starbucks; three weeks later the course was live and made £350k. His first successful business — selling medical admissions courses — was an idea he had at the mosque, and they were accepting payments within three weeks. In both cases he got his hands dirty personally, building landing pages and writing copy himself rather than handing a vision to a team. Cook names the system back to him: coffee shop idea, a set of criteria it matches, scrappy action, then just doing it.
→ Cook: 'you could apply this to anything going forward.'
Common mistakes
Listing wins you think should count
Cook draws a hard line between what you're genuinely, secretly proud of and what you think you should be proud of. Building the analysis on the latter reverse-engineers someone else's system, not yours.
Doing it 'properly' once you're bigger
Ali admits that with a head of product and a big audience, he now feels he should do competitor analysis and follow the methods — and the productivity course he could have banged out in three weeks hasn't shipped. Cook's read is that this is why startups win: procedure replaces execution.
Waiting for the first draft to be good
Smith identifies Ali's magic source as removing the pressure of it being good and accepting a disgusting first draft. Ali wrote 50,000 words in a week that way, versus 10,000 words in two years spent overthinking and outlining.
From the transcript
“I think everyone on the planet has a personal success system they just might not know exactly what it is”
“mine is set the intention speak to someone who's done it ask them how they did it find out a method and then split that…”
“think about the things that you've done that you're most proud of and not the things that you think you should be the most proud…”
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