When I was a kid, the flu hit me extraordinarily hard. I was down for 2 weeks. I couldn’t eat. I slept poorly. I got way behind on school work.

I did lose like 15 pounds, though.

Due to diligently getting my flu vaccine every year since, I haven’t really gotten the flu, let alone as bad as I did.

Until last week.

The flu is going around the county, including at my kids’ school. So when my daughter came home with a 103°F fever, I knew it was only a matter of time for me.

By Thursday, I was feeling pretty rotten; rotten enough to go to urgent care over the weekend for fear of pneumonia or something worse.

Thankfully, it was “just” the flu.

So I had a lot of time on my hands. And I decided to watch a bunch of movies — 13, to be exact.

• The Original Star Wars Trilogy
• The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
• Every movie featuring Chris Evans’ Captain America (The first Captain America Trilogy, plus the first four Avengers movies).

What These Epic Movies Taught Me

Watching all of these movies back to back taught me some really important aspects of not just storytelling, but any complex system:

First, you need a main character. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is not a very good movie because we don’t have one. Stuff just kind of happens to characters. The Avengers movies, meanwhile, have ensemble casts but all have a clear main character (usually Tony Stark, but also Thanos in Infinity War and Steve Rogers in Endgame).

Second, a formula helps…a lot. Star Wars follows The Hero’s Journey. Unlikely hero, wise mentor, some call to action, personal conflict, growth, resolution.

The Marvel movies also follow a formula, though it may depend on the phase. We have the original story and call to power, the “mirror villain,” some great guilt or sacrifice, and finding the will to win.

Plus, some mega CGI battle.

You Need a System

But here’s what really struck me, somewhere around Avengers: Age of Ultron:

All of these movies work—sometimes despite their flaws—because they follow a system, a formula. A structure that keeps things moving forward even when one part is weak.

In fact, the end of Captain America: Winter Soldier fed right into Age of Ultron. The formula also serves as a bridge. You can tell Marvel had the vision (see what I did there) early, and use the formula to put all the pieces into place.

Compare that with the Star Wars Prequels, which basically immediately break their own canon by making Qui-Gon Jinn Obi-Wan Kenobi’s master instead of Yoda. There’s no cohesive vision.

And that’s the 3rd aspect you need for good movies: a vision. It’s what made the MCU’s Infinity Saga so good and anything outside the Original Star Wars Trilogy lackluster.

The Sequel Trilogy doesn’t even have a vision among those 3 movies, and the last one basically undoes Return of the Jedi.

That’s how I think about systems and automation.

Main Character, Formula, Vision

If you don’t have a clear “main character” (the purpose), a reliable formula (the workflow), or a vision for how it should all look, you’re going to end up with a bunch of tasks and tools just kind of happening. Like Phantom Menace.

But if you know what you’re building toward—and you let the system take care of the smaller scenes—you can focus on the big stuff: client work, content, growth.

So how do you do it?

Well, you don’t need 12-50 years. You don’t even need it to be perfect at first. You just need the broad strokes:

1. What is the “main character” of your system? A task you’re trying to consistently run? A client? An employee? What’s the purpose of what you’re building?
2. What’s the formula, or workflow? How should it run? What are the inputs? What’s the expected outcome? For example: Client books a call -> form is filled out -> Zap runs -> Notion database updates.
3. What’s the vision? In a perfect world, what is this system (or automation) doing for you? What do you no longer need to do because of it? What can you do because of it?

Nail down your main character, formula, and vision. That’s the key to reducing the friction in your business and building more space in your life — which you’ll definitely need if you’re into Star Wars and Marvel.

Start with one task, and you’re on your way to building your own systematized universe—no Infinity Stones required.