Suzie Key Tima

Engineers love systems. Here’s how I hacked personal development like a project.

I spend most of my day designing solutions to technical problems: defining requirements, modeling roads, testing, and iterating. It’s methodical. It works. And then I’d leave work, close my laptop, and approach my personal life like I had no brain at all.

I’d decide on a whim that I needed to “get fit” or “learn a language” or “be more productive.” No specs. No plan. Just vibes and willpower. Predictably, I’d crash and burn.

Then one day I had a thought: Why am I not engineering my own life?

Specs Before Building

Here’s what changed. I started treating self-improvement exactly like I treat engineering projects.

First: define your specs. “Get fit” isn’t a spec—it’s vague noise. But “run 3 miles under 25 minutes” is a spec. You can measure it. You can design against it.

When I wanted to improve my fitness, I got specific: “Run the Gate River Run, Workout 3 times per week.” Concrete. Measurable. Testable.

The vagueness was my real enemy. Precision is the difference between projects that ship and ones that die in limbo.

Prototype First

Next: prototype. Engineers don’t bet everything on version 1.0. We build small, test, learn.

I wanted to build a consistent morning routine. But instead of overhauling my entire morning (which would fail), I prototyped just the first 5 minutes for two weeks: wake up, pray, and drink water. That’s it. No gym, no meditation, nothing fancy.

After two weeks, I iterated. Added light movement. Tested that for two weeks. Then added more.

Most people do the opposite—they launch the fully-loaded v3.0 on January 1st and wonder why it crashes.

Iterate Based on Data

This is where the engineering mindset really shines: measure and iterate.

I tracked my morning routine completion rate (90%), my mood, and my energy during the day. The data told me I had the sequence wrong.

I adjusted. More data. Adjusted again.

Self-improvement isn’t a one-time deployment. It’s a continuous loop of measurement, learning, and refinement. Just like a production system.

The fitness example is obvious: workout logs, recovery metrics, etc. But I do this with learning languages too—tracking hours, vocabulary, etc. It removes ego from the equation. The system tells you what’s working.

Results

After three months of engineering my fitness like I engineer roads, I went from sporadic gym trips to consistent workouts. Not because I got more willpower. Because I got more intelligent about design.

The pattern is always the same: specificity, prototyping, measurement, iteration.

That’s not motivation. That’s engineering.

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I explore this engineer-life intersection deeper on my YouTube channel, where I break down how technical thinking applies to everything from relationships to side projects. If you want practical systems for your own goals, that’s where I dig deeper.

But here’s my question for you: What’s a non-engineering skill you’ve approached like an engineer? Maybe you brought project management rigor to your creative writing or used debugging logic to troubleshoot your relationships. Hit reply—I’m genuinely curious how people from other backgrounds think in systems.