Systematic thinking is taken up with the intention of succeeding in our career goals and in life. The main concepts of this method are identifying and analysing the problem before acting, formulating multiple options, defining and establishing selection criteria, taking the final decision boldly and with confidence. The whole emphasis here is to think before you act. Systemic thinking is a simple thinking technique for gaining systemic insights into complex situations and problems.
It puts the benefits of the systems thinking revolution within reach of everyone. The fundamental assumption on which the systemic thinking concept is based is that everything is systemic. In other words, everything interacts with effects and is affected by the things around it. Systematic thinking is about thinking methodically and is analytical in nature and presumes that certain rules have to be followed, while Systemic Thinking is a simple technique for finding the system focus. The basic idea in systemic thinking is to list as many different elements as we can think of, then look for similarities between them. The basic idea in systematic thinking is to list a handful of elements, compare them, rank them and then select the best one, discarding the rest.
As a matter of understanding, let us take the example of coming to the lecture on time and not getting up late. As per systematic thinking, the facts or arriving late could be analysed as ‘I study very late in the night and hence get up late, I have a night job and arrive very tired and need a few hours of sleep before coming to the class. As per systematic thinking, the options would be to stop studying very late in the night and sleep early, and another is to stop working at the night job, both of which are not acceptable.
So the solution would lie somewhere much behind that ends the day’s activities earlier, begin studying regularly and so on. In systemic thinking, I would list my other priorities, such as having a job to pay for the fees taking up the task of studying late in the night because I hang out with friends and soon. It is not possible to cut away from friends, but it is possible to reduce the time I waste with them and study regularly and sleep early.