The Mental Model Behind Every High-Performer I Know

During my first college internship, I completely replaced myself with Visual Basic scripts. Let me explain. 

I had been working in Excel for the first month of the internship. Basic market analysis stuff for a government consulting firm. I was annoyed by having to do the same things over and over again, and while cell functions were helping, they weren't handling as much of the work as I thought the computer could.

Then I got some advice from another intern doing some programming work for them: 

"If you're doing something manually on a computer more than once, there's probably a way to make the computer do it for you."

After I heard that advice, I did more research. I eventually learned about Visual Basic, a programming language built into Excel, and after spending a few weeks piecing together a basic understanding of it I was able to automate away almost all of the work I was doing as an intern.

By the time I left, I had completely replaced myself with Visual Basic scripts.

This was my first exposure to the "Systems Mindset." The idea that when faced with any kind of recurring task or process, there is usually some way to set up a system to handle it for you.

As I tried to embody this mentality, I started to see that many of the most successful people I encountered had mastered this mindset. When they saw something repetitive or defective in their life or business, they would build a system to handle it for them.