The Systems Guy • Follow me for systems on health, wealth, and free time ⚡ Cornell MBA • 2M+ audience

Hi, I'm Ben Meer.

Tired of non-actionable life advice, I started writing online in February 2022.

Here are the results:

→ Built social audience from 0 to 2M+ (across IG, LinkedIn, and X) 
→ Grew 0 to 690K+ followers on LinkedIn in 21 months
→ Scaled newsletter—System Sunday—from 0 to 270K+ subscribers

There are 2 primary ways I can help you:

1) System Sunday Newsletter

Most people don't know how to build life systems to accelerate personal growth. So I created a weekly newsletter that teaches these systems (it's free). Subscribe to unlock new levels of wealth, health, and freedom.

→ Try it: benmeer.com/ss

2) Archimedes [Coaching]

Access the most exclusive members' club for LinkedIn thought leaders. Get the proven systems, resources, and community to 10x your personal brand. 

→ Check it out: joinarchimedes.com

——

Sponsorships: partnerships@benmeer.com

Ben Meer

An idea I’m implementing in my life:

The 1-6-4 Method.

Popularized by entrepreneur and author Jesse Itzler, it’s a foolproof way to make sure you always have fun planned throughout the year.

1. Plan one big “year-making” event 

This is inspired by the Japanese concept of Misogi (a challenging annual endeavor).

Pick one massive defining challenge or event for the year that pushes you to grow past your limits:

• A long endurance event (like a marathon)
• A big personal project (like finally starting that side business)
• Something transformative (like a multi-day solo backpacking trip)

This’ll act as the anchor for your year.

2. Schedule 6 mini-adventures for every other month 

Lock in one small, exciting experience every other month (6 per year):

• Going camping at a national park
• Traveling on vacation to a place you’ve never been
• Attending a music festival where your favorite artist is performing
• Hosting a group of friends for a dinner party and game night
• Explore a new part of your city that you’ve always wanted to visit

3. Implement a winning habit every quarter

Add one positive, compounding habit every 3 months (4 per year).

It could be drinking more water, walking 10k steps per day, meditating, being on time, or any small routine that improves your life. 

These are your building blocks for long-term growth.

—

We’ve become bad at leisure.

The digital world isn’t bringing as much joy to our lives.

Having alternative choices (using the 1-6-4 Method) to look forward to throughout the year makes life so much more enjoyable.

And remember: 

Put these on your calendar so they actually happen rather than staying as ideas.

Cheers to more joy this year and beyond. 🥂

♻️ Repost to share this with your network.
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How to live life like it’s your second time around.

5 rules to experience more joy and less regret:

1. Remember the Spotlight Effect.

We think people are paying far more attention to us than they are. 

Harsh truth: 

Your freedom begins the day you realize nobody is thinking about you.

—

2. Consider the things you won’t care about in 5 years. 

• Other people’s opinions
• Petty disagreements
• Sensationalized news 

Allow yourself to stop caring now.

—

3. Shift your mindset from ‘I don’t know how’ to ‘I don’t know how yet.’

In the words of Adam Grant:

• Impostor syndrome: ‘I don't know what I'm doing. It's only a matter of time until everyone finds out.’

• Growth mindset: ‘I don't know what I'm doing yet. It's only a matter of time until I figure it out.’

The highest form of self-confidence is believing in your ability to learn.

—

4. Make 'No' your default. 

Whether it's a new work project or social gatherings, saying 'Yes' to non-priorities ruins your priorities. 

As Derek Sivers says, if it's not a 'Hell yeah,' it's a no.

Then pour that time into what actually excites you.


—

5. Normalize being weird.

“Weirdness is what sets us apart, gets us hired. Be your unapologetically weird self. In fact, being weird may even find you the ultimate happiness.” —Chris Sacca

—

We only get one do-over in this beautiful life. 

Make sure to live it intentionally. 🙌

♻️ Repost to help others live life to the fullest.
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If I had to restart my career tomorrow, these are the 9 soft skills I’d learn first:

1. Be the person who gets things done
↳ Organizations reward initiative.
↳ Solve problems proactively (promotions follow naturally).

2. Leverage the 7-38-55 Rule
↳ Other’s impression of you comes primarily from nonverbal cues.
↳ Focus on your tone and body language to elevate your communication.

3. Use the 4-Bullet Update
↳ Remind leaders of the task, your actions, blockers/risks, and follow-ups.
↳ You respect their time and show ownership.

4. Practice the Gratitude Loop regularly
↳ Spot good work, call it out specifically, and reciprocate.
↳ You will build loyalty and strong alliances fast.

5. Treat your speaking like game film
↳ Record calls/meetings and review them often. 
↳ It’ll help eliminate filler words and sharpen your delivery.

6. Send weekly Friday Highlights 
↳ Recap your wins and things you’re looking out for next week. 
↳ You both build trust in the moment and create a stack of evidence for review season. 

7. Apply the Plus One Rule everywhere
↳ Find ways to leave every process 1% better. 
↳ Consistent small upgrades make you indispensable.

8. Give yourself a Personal MBA
↳ 30 minutes of daily business reading sharpens your mind over time. 
↳ You’ll be thinking (and acting) like an executive before you know it. 

9. Eliminate complaining and gossip
↳ Your words about others reflect directly on your integrity.
↳ Replace negative speak with direct, respectful communication.

The AI era is here, and hard skills can be outsourced faster than ever.

What can’t be outsourced?

Your reputation.
Your initiative.
The trust you build with the people around you.

People skills are the real opportunity in 2026 and beyond.

And the best part is, anyone can learn them.

♻️ Repost to share these skills with your team.
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How to subtly upgrade your life in 2026.

Dial in these 5 everyday inputs:

1. Social Inputs

You become the 5 people you spend the most time with.

Choose wisely:

• Find intellectual sparring partners (where you help one another).
• Resist false kindness: Create an inner circle that will give you honest feedback.
• Avoid energy vampires: Spend more time with people who give you energy and less time with those who steal it.

—

2. Information Inputs

Elevate your sources. 

If you want to level up your information diet, here are some immediate upgrades:

TED Talks, documentaries, insightful podcasts, books that challenge and inspire, and unbiased news sources.

See the comments below for a curated list of my favorite resources.

—

3. Mental Inputs

Small shifts in language create big mindset shifts.

Among my favorites:

• Failure → Learning
• Stuck → Exploring new angles
• Nervous → Energized
• Hate → I prefer
• Have to → Get to

—

4. Health Inputs

Your brain influences every thought, feeling, and action you take.
So prioritize your brain health:

• Take long walks.
• Sleep 7+ hrs nightly.
• Have a strong rest ethic to avoid burnout.
• Rebalance your dopamine with less screen time.

—

5. Environmental Inputs

Pare down to essential items.

Then, manage both inbound & outbound possessions.

Inbound:
• Choose quality > quantity
• Purchase less; love every single item more

Outbound:
• Follow the 1 In, 1 Out Rule: If you buy one item, then donate, sell, or toss another

—

Your future results are a lagging measure of your current inputs.

Choose wisely. Everything else is downstream.

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"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." —Peter Drucker

20 simple phrases to build a healthy team culture:

If you want to install a growth mindset:

1. "What did we learn?"
2. "How might we…?"
3. "I need your help…"
4. "What are your thoughts on…?"
5. "Thanks for taking that risk."

If you want to build trust:

6. "I made a mistake."
7. "You've got my full support."
8. "I appreciate when you…"
9. Help me understand…"
10. "I trust your judgement."

If you want to cut out toxic language (avoid these):

11. "That's not my job."
12. "We've always done it this way."
13. "Who's to blame?"
14. "That'll never work."
15. "Just do what I say."

If you want to prevent eroding your culture (avoid these):

16. "They should have…"
17. "You're wrong because…"
18. "That's a stupid idea."
19. "Why didn't you…"
20. "I told you so."

The words you speak become the culture you work in.

The best ones don't just happen overnight.

They're built one word, phrase, and conversation at a time.

♻️ Repost to champion healthy workplace communication.
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Follow me to learn how you can leverage AI to boost your productivity and accelerate your career. Scaled products to 8 Million+ users and built the world's biggest AI newsletter with 1 Million+ readers.

Zain Kahn

This guy from Cambridge plays with Claude Code like he owns it.

He talks about his workflow in 2026 and here's what's new: 

1. Video-Based Specification (Spec Phase)

> Screen Recording: 

Instead of writing a spec from scratch, find an existing product that is similar to your idea. Record your screen while using it and talking through your specific feature ideas and changes.

> Generate PRD: 

Upload this video to Gemini 1.5 Pro (referred to as Gemini 3 Pro/Free Pro in the video context) and ask it to generate a Product Requirement Document (PRD).

> Refine Spec: 

Use the "Ask User Question" tool in Claude Code. Prompt it to interview you about the generated spec to fill in missing details (e.g., "How should the emoji picker be positioned?").

> Package Discovery: 

Feed the refined spec into ChatGPT with "Heavy Thinking" (likely OpenAI's o1/o3 models) to search for and recommend specific, well-maintained GitHub packages (e.g., for a WYSIWYG editor) to avoid building complex components from scratch.

2. The Orchestrator Role

> Design Feedback Loops: 

Your primary job is not to write code but to design loops where the agent can build, fail, and learn.

> Monitor & Update: 

Watch the agent’s reasoning. If it makes a mistake, don't just fix the code—update the claude. md (project instructions file) to prevent that specific mistake from happening again.

> High-Level Decisions: 

Make the architectural decisions the agent can't, such as choosing the database or specific tools.

3. Model Choice & Tools

> Model Selection: 

Use Opus 4.5 for building large-scale features and GPT-5.2 for architecture and debugging (specific future models mentioned in his 2026 context).

> Voice Dictation: 

Use HyperWhisper to dictate prompts significantly faster than typing.

4. Execution & "Parallel Vibe Coding"

> Parallel Agents: 

For small, well-defined tasks (like extracting hard-coded strings for translations), spin up multiple sub-agents to work on different parts of the project simultaneously.

> Avoid Conflicts: 

Do not use parallel agents for large features within the same project to avoid complex merge conflicts ("meshing issues").

> Sub-agents for Multi-Project Fixes: 

If a bug exists in a template used by multiple projects, spin up one sub-agent per project to fix them all in parallel.

5. Review & Maintenance

> Planning Mode: 

Use Claude Code’s "Planning Mode" to prevent Architectural Drift, ensuring the agent sticks to the original design vision over time.

> Shape of Diffs: 

Inspect the "shape" of the code changes (diffs) to ensure they are manageable and align with expectations before accepting them.

> Forking for Learning: 

If the agent does something surprising or complex, fork the session. In the forked session, ask "Why did you do that?" or request diagrams to understand the code without polluting the context of the main working session.

Get more tutorials here: https://lnkd.in/e64Jvdrt

Follow me to learn how you can leverage AI to boost your productivity and accelerate your career. Scaled products to 10 Million+ users.

Traditional computer science degrees can't keep up with this pace.

Here are the 15 engineering blogs that actually teach real-world scale:

1 → THE CODE
Scale at global level.
Teaches you how to code with AI and AI Agents
https://lnkd.in/e64Jvdrt

2 → Airbnb Tech Blog
Product engineering done right.
User focused systems.
https://airbnb.tech/blog/

3 → Meta Engineering
Billions of users infrastructure.
Performance at extreme scale.
https://engineering.fb.com

4 → AWS Architecture
Cloud design patterns revealed.
Production ready blueprints.
https://lnkd.in/gqjh88PS

5 → Netflix TechBlog
Streaming at massive scale.
Chaos engineering explained.
https://lnkd.in/gNE8Cs6Z

6 → Discord Engineering
Real time systems mastery.
Handling millions of connections.
https://lnkd.in/gea6kSwt

7 → Google Research
Cutting edge tech breakthroughs.
Tomorrow's solutions today.
https://lnkd.in/gjzDu8wp

8 → NVIDIA Developer
GPU powered computing insights.
AI infrastructure secrets.
https://lnkd.in/dt_BW7qF

9 → Slack Engineering
Collaboration platform internals.
Distributed systems at scale.
https://slack.engineering

10 → Cloudflare Blog
Internet infrastructure deep dives.
Security and performance wins.
https://lnkd.in/gqa-HE6h

11 → Figma Tech Blog
Collaborative design systems.
Browser performance magic.
https://lnkd.in/g2KF_eX9

12 → Shopify Engineering
E-commerce at scale.
Black Friday traffic handled.
https://lnkd.in/g7DVzRAc

13 → Stripe Engineering
Payment systems that work.
Financial infrastructure explained.
https://lnkd.in/gfMr-jEr

14 → Microsoft Engineering
Enterprise scale solutions.
Developer tools insights.
https://lnkd.in/g3Mi8XES

15 → GitHub Engineering
Code collaboration at scale.
Developer platform secrets.
https://lnkd.in/gPHaD6AC

16 → Bonus
System design deep dives.
https://lnkd.in/g-tP7eEc

Save this for later.
Repost ♻️ for aspiring engineers.

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Claude Code is only as good as your orchestration workflow.

I spent 6 months testing it so you don't have to. 

[ P.S. You can get my Ultimate Claude Code guide for engineers here at no cost: https://lnkd.in/e64Jvdrt ]

So Boris Cherny (the creator of Claude Code at Anthropic) recently shared the internal best practices his team actually uses daily. 

Someone brilliantly distilled those threads into a structured CLAUDE .md file you can drop straight into any project root.

It acts as a system prompt. Turns Claude into a far more autonomous, rigorous engineering partner.

Here's what it does:

→ 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Mandates "Plan Node Default" for any task over 3 steps. Uses subagents liberally to keep the main context window clean.

→ 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽: This is the real magic. After ANY correction, it updates a tasks/lessons .md file. You're building a compounding system where the mistake rate drops over time because it actively learns from your feedback.

→ 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲: Can't mark a task complete without proving it works. Diffs behavior. Runs tests. Checks logs. The bar? "Would a staff engineer approve this?"

→ 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗕𝘂𝗴 𝗙𝗶𝘅𝗶𝗻𝗴: Zero hand-holding. Point it at failing CI tests or error logs... it just goes to work. No constant context switching from you.

→ 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁 𝗧𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Forces a "Plan First" approach written to a todo .md with checkable items before any implementation starts.

And perhaps the most important part?

It forces the AI to prioritize simplicity, find root causes instead of temporary fixes, and minimize the blast radius of every change. Senior developer standards. Not shortcuts.

If you're spending hours a day in the terminal with AI, setting up a strong .md instruction file like this isn't optional anymore. It's the difference between AI that drifts and AI that compounds.

It takes time to set up. But if you do, you're ahead of almost everyone else.

Lemon is the most powerful tool I've used since ChatGPT.

You literally say things with your voice and it does it for you instantly.

Pure magic.

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