How a 15-minute daily habit taught me to start with something that a year of planning couldn’t teach
I was hanging out with a few friends at my 10-year reunion.
Catching up on life, cracking a few jokes here and there. A few careers with a steady upward trajectory. Most of us have had significant twists and turns along the way. As we headed off to dinner, one of my friends said, “Dude. I saw you posted on LinkedIn this morning.”
“Ah, yeah.”
He laughed. “I was like how? I know I saw him yesterday, so was he up early posting on LinkedIn?”
“Oh, I scheduled it the day before. Like my newsletter.”
He said “ahh, at this rate, I’m like this dude is just trolling us.”
We laughed about that. That’s when I realized that a system that has become so normalized to me, seemed a bit “out there” to a friend, who’s also a founder himself.
Later I thought, “well I’d rather be a troll than a 419 online scammer.”
It made me understand something different about branding.
Your environment is your brand
The systems you build determine how you show up.
What you show up doing consistently is your brand.
It’s that simple. If you don’t actively shape your brand narrative, someone else will shape it for you.
Back to the reunion, that one friend wasn’t the only one. Earlier that day, another friend had asked how I published my newsletter even though we stayed out late the night before. Again, it was my system.
Just ten years ago, when we were still wide-eyed ambitious tinkerers in sunny Palo Alto, the narrative was quite different. The association between Nigerians and “being online” always led to a “so are you a Nigerian prince trying to scam me out of my money” joke.
10 years later, most of my conversations were about my writing journey. The daily process. Whether I make enough money on it or not. And how the hell I’m there but posting on LinkedIn and writing newsletters.
With each question, I started to understand people’s perception. Most of my friends think writing on LinkedIn is some full-time job. I spent time explaining the daily system that allows me to stay consistent, while spending less than 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn.
That system has helped me show up. It has created a mental association. The output is a brand.
One that is way better than the negative brand of Nigerians online just a decade ago.
But I wouldn’t have known if I wasn’t there.
I don’t have the opportunity to be in-person all the time to get this type of feedback. But one thing that allows me to keep going is my focus on “the how.”
The system is the how.
If you don’t choose a system. A system will choose you.
I see this in the founders and writers that I’ve worked with, over the last decade.
There is a huge focus on the ‘why’ and not enough on the ‘how.’
But too much focus on that “perfect why” is another disguise for resistance. Founders never start, hardly talk to customers, continue tweaking LinkedIn headlines, as writers stare down blank pages, re-prompting Claude endlessly for the perfect sentences.
While everyone’s saying, “Start with the why.”
I’m saying, “Focus on the how.”
Instead of spending a year, figuring out why you want to write, develop a system that helps you write a page of your book one afternoon at a time. In a year, you’ll have a book.
Instead of dwelling on the reason you’re driven to start a business. Build a system that helps you develop something, talk to customers, sell that thing daily. In a quarter, you’ll have enough data to build or kill the idea.
The how gets you to the why.
You figure it out through action.
Without a system, you will find it difficult to stay consistent, to pass on what you know, and to show up the way you want to.
Without the intention, people will create associations for you. Even worse, to fit in, you’ll have to define yourself by rigid titles that you sometimes don’t believe in.
Now, do I want to be the “author writing guy?”
That’s a question I have to answer because I don’t see myself as solely that person. However, that’s just one of many possible associations. And as my friend said later that night as we were reflecting on the event “well, you’re an entrepreneur but being the guy that writes books is not a bad thing to be associated with.”
This is true. Even better is the fact that I directed that narrative. I can choose to bring more associations to the forefront with a system that allows me to do that.
I wouldn’t have been able to write consistently or as my friend said “troll people” if I didn’t use a system.
But how do you create a narrative system that you’ll actually use?
Here’s how I built mine:
Curate a “one-minute” note environment
The best practitioners don’t rely on willpower. They curate an environment that helps them do things they want.
I find that the best storytellers create an environment that makes capturing observations easy .
Build a one-minute note environment.
When I look back, I’m sure my friends thought I was a LinkedIn influencer that was constantly creating content on my phone. Throughout the entire weekend, I hardly pulled out my phone. I was focused on the conversations in front of me. I was locked into one conversation long enough that a friend said, “You know I recently started writing on LinkedIn because I read one of your posts that said – just post.”
I had no clue.
He hardly engages with my posts. But I’d take the invisible fact that I inspire him to put himself out there. That beats LinkedIn engagements any day.
As a reminder to get out there and own your narrative, here is the one-minute daily system that I invite you to experiment with.
Take one note a day (one sentence is enough).
At the end of the day, reflect on the most important thing. Turning notes from lived experiences into insights is the most important step. It allows me to live in the moment as much as possible.
Create a story bank. As the days go by, the notes from your daily observations build up. You’ll use your stories as entry points to shape your narrative.
Make it personal. Write down how that observation mattered to you and what you learned about yourself. Why was it important to note?
Make sure to make the personal, universal. Extract how that personal learning applies to a broader insight that other people can relate to. You can connect “a difficult conversation at work” to a broader trend you see in careers and relationships.
Finish with applications and help. People are looking for tools to help them improve. Share an approach on how to navigate the new insight you came about.
It all starts with observing and capturing notes.
Now, this is just one of the many systems that make up my environment and build my associations.
Develop your environment of systems, one at a time.
Try this one-minute system for a week and notice what changes.
Closing Reflection:
Your brand is not going to fit on one perfect line on LinkedIn or a resume. It’s how you show up and what you’re associated with.
Writing started as a function to improve my reputation online. Now, with my engineering background and entrepreneurial spirit, it helps me share my observations, communicate better, and build more trust with people at a scale I am still not fully aware of.
Do an environment audit because it could be building a perception you might not be aware of.
Before you go, sit with this for a moment.
“What system can I adopt today that will improve the associations I have in the future?”
Yours truly,
Nifemi
P.S. What’s one system you’ve built that surprised the people around you? Reply and tell me. I read every response and I plan to feature some of the best systems in future editions.