A new type of work: systems based work

Published: June 25, 2026 · 3 min read

I've written before about output vs. presence work. Output work is about what you ship; presence work is about the work being in your presence. Both are directly tied to your time and energy.

But there's a third type I've been thinking about that doesn't fit either category, and I think it's worth naming: systems based work.

Systems based work

Systems work isn't tied to your presence or output, but it may require both in the beginning of building the system. Eventually, you're able to build something once and it keeps producing, whether you're in the room or not. But the actual work in systems based work is in the optimization and scaling of it all.

You're watching for edge cases the system can't handle, fixing the gaps so it keeps running. The work shifts from doing to maintaining and growing what does the work for you.

The skills that make someone great at output work don't automatically translate here. Output work rewards execution; systems work rewards architecture. You have to think about what happens when you're not there, which is a different question than what you need to do next.

The 10-80-10 rule

In the early phases, systems work rarely starts hands-off. You often have to put in a mix of presence and output to get it off the ground. In real estate, this can look like being present for the first 10% when contractors start a project, setting the foundation and getting things moving. The 80% runs without you. You return for the final 10% to close it out. Over time, the goal is that the whole cycle gets absorbed into the system; the check-ins get shorter, the gaps where you're needed get fewer, until you've removed yourself from the middle and eventually from more of the edges too.