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Leitura de 17 min

Investigating Your Invisible Systems

Summary

This episode delves deeper into the concept that our systems are perfectly designed for the outcomes we experience, building on a previous discussion. The host clarifies that systems exist whether they are intentionally or accidentally designed, emphasizing that our intent is less important than the actual outcomes produced.

The discussion introduces the idea of ‘accidental design,’ where systems create unintended behaviors or outcomes. Examples include Goodhart’s law, where a measure becomes a target and distorts behavior, and the impact of one’s physical workspace on psychological state and productivity. The host stresses that to change outcomes, especially personal behaviors, we must investigate and alter the underlying systems, not just rely on motivation or willpower.

The core exercise proposed is to identify ‘invisible systems’ or ‘assumed rules’ that govern our lives without conscious evaluation. These are the unexamined forces, like a rule to always accept meeting invites out of respect, that may be reinforcing undesired outcomes like constant busyness. The episode concludes by encouraging listeners to dig up these invisible rules, re-evaluate them, and consciously redesign the systems that shape their daily behavior.

Recommendations

Books

  • Atomic Habits — James Clear’s book is referenced multiple times. The host paraphrases its core idea that we ‘fall to the level of our systems’ and that designing your environment is key to forming habits. He recommends adding it to your reading list if you haven’t read it.

Concepts

  • Goodhart’s Law — Presented as a classic example of accidental system design. The law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure because it encourages behavior aimed at manipulating the target rather than the underlying goal.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction and focus on clarity through systems — Jonathan Cuttrell introduces the episode, stating the goal is to help developers find clarity and purpose. He frames the discussion around systems, referencing a previous episode’s principle that our systems are perfectly designed for our outcomes. He sets the stage for a clarification about intentional versus accidental system design.
  • 00:01:27 — Intentional vs. accidental system design — The host explains that a system exists whether you design it intentionally or accidentally. He argues that intent is less important than outcomes because our designed systems may not accomplish what we intend. If you have an intent but aren’t getting the desired result, there is likely an accidental, unseen part of your system at play.
  • 00:03:24 — Examples of accidental design: Goodhart’s law and environment — Goodhart’s law is presented as a classic example of accidental design, where a measure becomes a target and changes behavior. Another example is the physical workspace, where elements like open space can subconsciously impact heart rate and thinking. The host connects this to the broader idea that our environment is a system that influences outcomes.
  • 00:05:26 — Connecting systems to habits and James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits’ — The discussion references James Clear’s book ‘Atomic Habits’ to illustrate how systems determine our ability to form habits. The host paraphrases Clear’s idea that we ‘fall to the level of our systems,’ not our goals. He emphasizes that systems operate without constant willpower and that designing your environment provides the right cues for desired behaviors.
  • 00:09:28 — Systems include personal environments and IDEs — The host makes the concept personal for software developers, stating that even their IDE setup is a system designed to encourage or discourage certain behaviors. He urges listeners to evaluate if they are getting what they want from these environmental systems, which are often invisible factors shaping outcomes.
  • 00:10:07 — Key point: Systems produce behavioral outcomes — This is highlighted as the key takeaway: the outcomes from a system are not just measurable metrics like money or test pass rates; they include human behavior. Your own behavior is an outcome you experience. Therefore, to change your behavior, the highest leverage opportunity is to change the invisible systems that encourage or discourage it, not to rely on motivation.
  • 00:12:48 — Exercise: Identify your invisible systems and assumed rules — The host proposes a concrete exercise: write down the ‘invisible systems’ or ‘assumed rules’ that govern your life. These are unexamined rules you take for granted, like always accepting meeting invites out of respect. He encourages digging up these rules to see if they produce desired outcomes or accidentally reinforce things like perpetual busyness.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2025-07-17T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:16:20

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] hey everyone and welcome to developer team my name is jonathan cuttrell my goal on the show

[00:00:15] is to help driven developers like you find clarity perspective and purpose in their careers

[00:00:19] today’s episode is going to be focused on clarity in particular and perhaps some some on perspective

[00:00:28] but mostly about clarity in this episode we’re going to we’re going to be talking more about

[00:00:34] systems we’ve recently been talking about how your systems are perfectly designed for the

[00:00:38] outcomes that you’re experiencing all right so go back and listen to that episode if you haven’t yet

[00:00:43] that isn’t that is a very important uh kind of fundamental principle to walk into this episode

[00:00:52] with okay because uh there’s a little bit of an edit maybe not an

[00:00:58] edit but it’s a little bit of an edit maybe not an edit but it’s a little bit of an edit

[00:00:58] a clarification that we should make about systems and we we said that our your systems are designed

[00:01:06] perfectly for the outcomes uh it’s important to recognize and perhaps we did talk a little

[00:01:13] bit about this in that episode but it’s important to recognize that your system

[00:01:18] exists whether you intentionally design it or accidentally design it

[00:01:27] so let’s let’s

[00:01:28] talk a little more about what we mean by intentionally versus accidentally designing

[00:01:34] something the the implication of design is that you’ve made some kind of choices

[00:01:39] right you’ve you’ve set up your system in a particular way uh and the the false belief

[00:01:46] is that when we make decisions our intent

[00:01:51] right whatever we are trying to do with the system is the thing that matters the most

[00:01:58] this is not the case if all that mattered was our intent then all of us would be exactly what we

[00:02:06] want to be all of us would have figured out how to make all the money that we want to make

[00:02:12] i intend to do that well i imagine you do too right so why do our intentions not necessarily

[00:02:22] match up with our outcomes because what we’ve designed in our system doesn’t necessarily

[00:02:28] accomplish the things that we intend to accomplish right um so our intent is less

[00:02:35] important than the outcomes we need to judge our systems by the outcomes we can also investigate

[00:02:41] whether the choices that we’ve made the intentional parts of our design are the principal

[00:02:48] components the primary factors that are determining those outputs those outcomes or if it’s something

[00:02:58] i would say even likely that if you have an intent if you’ve intentionally designed a system

[00:03:05] and you’re not getting what you want there’s very likely something that is happening

[00:03:09] that you’re not really seeing there’s some part of your system design that is accidental

[00:03:16] so what is what do we mean by accidental design uh the the simplest example of this

[00:03:24] is inspired by goodhart’s law

[00:03:28] the idea that with some system you’ve created a measure and that measure has now become a target

[00:03:33] and so now you’ve changed behaviors around the target where previously it may have been a good

[00:03:41] measure it is no longer a good measure because there are new behaviors introduced you’ve

[00:03:48] encouraged or discouraged some kind of behavior in order to change that target

[00:03:53] that’s an example of an accidental change an accidental design

[00:03:58] uh factor right you’ve accidentally designed your system in a way that encourages or discourages a

[00:04:04] particular behavior as a gamification is a typical kind of terminology that you hear

[00:04:11] uh with relation to this this subject there’s also other accidental design decisions uh or

[00:04:20] non-decisions maybe uh for example a very very common one is uh people’s workspace

[00:04:28] your workspace whatever is around you is going to have some kind of impact on the way you think

[00:04:37] so if for example uh your workspace has more open space then there’s uh there’s a chance

[00:04:47] and this is based on some psychological research there’s a chance that you’re going to have a

[00:04:53] little bit lower heart rate because you can see uh something that is a

[00:04:58] distance away right this is uh you know there’s some biological factors and uh some kind of

[00:05:06] psychosocial uh factors or something like that at play there i’m not this is in my area of study

[00:05:13] but the important kind of principle here is that the way you design your environment actually makes

[00:05:20] a big difference you know this speaking of systems and designing environments if you haven’t read

[00:05:26] james clear’s book

[00:05:28] atomic habits hopefully i mean certainly if you listen to this podcast regularly you probably

[00:05:33] come across this book james talks about how important our habits are and how our systems

[00:05:41] are designed uh determines so much about our ability to adopt new habits habits are in many

[00:05:51] ways kind of expressions of the systems that we have around us and james even says that we

[00:05:58] don’t rise to the level of our ambition it’s i’m paraphrasing we don’t rise to the level of our

[00:06:04] goals i think maybe the word he uses we fall to the level of our systems our systems are the things

[00:06:12] that are there without us necessarily intervening it doesn’t require as much willpower to follow a

[00:06:20] system james talks a lot about environment for example right designing your environment so that

[00:06:26] you’re getting the right cues and you’re getting the right tools and you’re getting the right tools

[00:06:28] and you’re hiding the wrong cues go and read the book i’m not going to give away the uh the entire

[00:06:35] kind of model of thinking because that book is worth reading for sure uh add it to your reading

[00:06:42] list if you haven’t read it yet the important uh takeaway here is that our systems are not

[00:06:51] necessarily just the things we put together intentionally our systems are also not

[00:06:58] uh uh you know aware of our intent we could say that you know the i want to

[00:07:08] let’s say increase quality of my code base right that’s my intent and in order to increase quality

[00:07:16] i’ve decided that the best thing that we can do is to have all of the product managers read the

[00:07:22] code base front to back and i’m going to set up

[00:07:28] an expectation that all new product managers need to read the code base front to back

[00:07:32] yeah this is a system right this is some kind of system that i’ve set up

[00:07:37] um and it has various triggers and it has various stocks and flows that you might be able to

[00:07:43] diagram out how effective is this system at generating the output or the outcome

[00:07:50] that i want to generate my guess is it probably wouldn’t be very effective hopefully

[00:07:56] hopefully that’s your guess too

[00:07:58] but uh my intent may be fully intact right so our intent we can set aside

[00:08:07] in terms of evaluating whether the system is good or bad we can use our intent to kind of

[00:08:14] measure the outcomes right if we want something we want some outcome then we implement a system

[00:08:21] in order to get that outcome that we want we should be able to measure whether or not we

[00:08:25] are actually getting it we can compare it to the outcome that we want to get and we can measure

[00:08:28] it to the outcome that we want to get and we can measure

[00:08:28] our outcomes to what we’re actually getting

[00:08:30] but the next step isn’t to throw our hands up and say well we should we should try harder

[00:08:36] it’s not to throw up and say throw our hands up and say uh well somebody’s not doing it right

[00:08:42] somebody’s not following the system because the system is foolproof we should be investigating

[00:08:49] what it is that the system is generating and uh most importantly for this episode

[00:08:57] the invisible problem

[00:08:58] parts of our system invisible things that are affecting our system you know we we keep saying

[00:09:07] system over and over and this may feel like if you’re if you’re a software engineer you may feel

[00:09:13] like um you know this is limited to managers or you may feel like this is this is you know

[00:09:19] corporate speak or not necessarily germane to your software engineering your ide your local

[00:09:26] setup is a system

[00:09:28] right you have designed your ide to encourage some behaviors and discourage other behaviors

[00:09:35] are you getting what you want out of it when you think about what you’re designing

[00:09:42] uh in your environment especially those are the systems that are going to encourage or discourage

[00:09:50] certain outcomes for you all right most of the time when we talk about these invisible systems

[00:09:58] we discount that our behaviors can be included in the outcomes of a system i want to really focus

[00:10:07] in on this because if you don’t take anything else away from this episode this is the key point

[00:10:11] to take away okay pause it get it get something write this down the outcomes from your system

[00:10:19] are not necessarily just measurable uh you know dollar amounts it’s not necessarily uh you know

[00:10:28] the the the flow of candidates through your hiring pipeline it’s not just the uh the pass rates

[00:10:37] of your test suite that’s not the only kinds of outcomes the outcomes you can have from a system

[00:10:43] can be human behavior your own behavior included you can design systems for yourself if you start

[00:10:52] thinking about your own behavior through the lens of this first assertion from a few

[00:10:58] episodes ago that our systems are perfectly designed for the outcomes that we’re experiencing

[00:11:03] then my behavior is an outcome that i’m experiencing i’m responsible for it right

[00:11:11] what is the systematic change that i can make and this is really kind of the

[00:11:16] some of the core fundamental ideas that james explores in his book as well

[00:11:21] what is the systematic change that i could make such that my behavior changes

[00:11:28] in a way that i want we don’t have to necessarily fight ourselves over doing or not doing the right

[00:11:36] thing if we can evaluate that we want to change our own behaviors the highest leverage opportunity

[00:11:42] we have is to look at our systems the invisible things that encourage us to behave in one way or

[00:11:52] not to behave in one way that is where our highest leverage opportunity is

[00:11:58] not in getting some kind of motivation motivation is helpful for a very short amount of time

[00:12:06] right most of the time it’s not just it’s not necessarily a knowledge gap there may be a

[00:12:10] knowledge gap uh how do you avoid having knowledge gaps in the future though right reading that one

[00:12:18] book to close that knowledge gap and then in a year from now you’ve got another another

[00:12:22] knowledge gap to figure out what is the system what is the engine what is the generator

[00:12:28] uh what is common about many strung together events many strung together behaviors in your

[00:12:34] life these are the systems that you fall to so i want you to focus on identifying now

[00:12:42] the most important thing or or i guess um the most important exercise i want you to do

[00:12:48] in response to this episode if i could choose if i could have you do one exercise

[00:12:53] i would have you get out a piece of paper and write down the invisible systems don’t

[00:12:58] don’t write down you know your your typical commitments that you make like oh yeah i you

[00:13:02] know i wake up at a certain hour in order to go to the gym those are those are the more visible

[00:13:07] systems that you’ve set up in your life right uh you know oh i have these meetings that are

[00:13:13] on my calendar those are visible systems i want you to write down the assumed rules

[00:13:21] that govern your life these are rules that you more or less are taking on

[00:13:28] for granted, that you believe that you need to behave in a certain way. Maybe you haven’t even

[00:13:33] evaluated whether that’s true, but you’ve taken these rules for granted. These rules are roughly

[00:13:41] mapping to some kind of invisible system in your life, right? Or set of systems. We don’t

[00:13:46] necessarily have to identify specific atomic systems in your life. It’s all kind of at the

[00:13:53] same layer. You can think about it that way. These are forces that are changing your behavior

[00:13:58] that you probably haven’t evaluated in some time, right? Think about forces that

[00:14:08] encourage you to always accept meetings, right? This is a rule that you may have.

[00:14:16] Anytime somebody has invited you to a meeting, that it’s important for you to show respect by

[00:14:22] accepting that.

[00:14:23] their invite, right? So you live by this rule that maybe you haven’t really evaluated whether

[00:14:28] that rule is producing the outcomes that you want. I imagine that most of you are pretty busy.

[00:14:34] So accepting all invites is going to reinforce your busyness, right? What are the outcomes that

[00:14:42] you really want? Do you want to continue being more and more busy? Or do you want to examine

[00:14:48] that invisible system, that invisible rule that you’ve just assumed is true or assumed is helpful

[00:14:55] or assumed is important? Dig that up and re-evaluate and determine what systems are you

[00:15:03] following accidentally. What is the design, the accidental design of systems that is affecting

[00:15:10] your behavior day to day? Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:15:15] You’ve heard a couple of plane noises in the background.

[00:15:18] It’s one of the changes that have come with some of our production differences

[00:15:24] in moving to recording video. Again, we’re going to be releasing videos. This is the third episode

[00:15:32] where we actually have a video recorded. It’s not yet released to iTunes. If you’re listening right

[00:15:38] after the day that this was recorded, of course, you may be watching me say this right now, and

[00:15:42] then you’ll know that this is not the case anymore. But we’re recording videos. We’re getting all of

[00:15:48] our content out. We’re getting all of our content out. We’re getting all of our content out.

[00:15:48] We’re getting all of our assets put together. I do have a full-time job. The podcast is not my

[00:15:54] full-time job. So thank you all for being patient and waiting for those videos to come out. In the

[00:15:59] meantime, go and subscribe in whatever podcasting app you currently use to Developer Tea and let

[00:16:05] your friends know about this. Once this thing is out on video, you can share the video with

[00:16:10] your friends just as easily. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.

[00:16:18] Bye-bye.

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