Hey, I’m Tahjai Dominic, and welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only access 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. I write a letter to my son each week with meaningful advice, life lessons and need to know information that every young man should know. This is a continuance letter, a book if you will, designed to push any young man to keep focus and avoid disastrous mistakes in life. If you are want to receive every letter, upgrade your subscription. If not that is perfectly fine, you’ll still get one letter a month.
DearSon,
If I could travel back and sit with the younger version of myself, hungry, ambitious, a little impatient, I’d give him one foundational piece of advice: Don’t chase goals. Build systems.
Goals are great. They give you direction, something to aim at. But goals, by themselves, don’t get you anywhere. They’re just distant markers on the map. What actually moves you down the road are systems, daily, repeatable actions that compound over time.
Here’s what I’ve learned: It’s easy to get excited about the outcome. Everyone loves the idea of being rich, fit, respected, and free. But the truth is, very few people are willing to commit to the boring stuff that leads to that outcome. Waking up early. Practicing consistently. Showing up even when no one’s clapping.
When I was younger, I used to write goals on paper and tape them to the wall. ‘Make $10K/month.’ ‘Buy a house.’ ‘Start a business.’ But I didn’t understand that goals without systems are just wishes. And wishes don’t build real change.
It wasn’t until I flipped my focus—from outcome to process—that I started seeing real traction. I didn’t just set a goal to get in shape, I created a system to hit the gym 4 times a week. I didn’t just wish to grow my business, I built a system of outreach and follow-up that ran daily. Systems are the engine. Goals are just the dashboard.
I want you to pick one area of your life right now: health, money, mindset, relationships, business, any area where you feel stuck. Then I want you to ask yourself: What’s one system I could build here? Not something massive. Just something small and consistent. Something you could do 3–5 times a week without fail.
And when you find that thing, commit to it for a week. Then two. Then a month. Don’t look for fireworks. Look for rhythm. Because when your habits become automated, your results become inevitable.
You’ll be amazed at how life starts to shift, not because you hit a huge goal all at once but because you did the small thing so many times it couldn’t be ignored.
And one day, when you're older, you’ll look back not in awe of your dreams, but in gratitude for the routines that made them real.
Keep building
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