Momentum – and why it Matters
Bad habits are hard to break. So are good ones. Momentum is behind everything and it’s why doing something even once makes it easier to do it again.
The first time an employee takes a dollar from the cash drawer it’s a big deal. They’re overcoming their conscience, fear and all the inhibitions holding them back from stealing anything, even a dollar. The next time they do it, it’s a little easier. They feel a little less fear, a little less guilt. At some point – maybe the 10th or 20th or 100th time, it no longer takes effort to steal. It takes effort not to.
There’s a reason why recovering alcoholics avoid taking even one drink. Having one drink makes having that second one much easier, and the 3rd is easier yet. It’s all related to momentum, and it can be applied to any kind of change whether positive or negative.
Think of a heavy train rushing down the tracks at 80 mph. Imagine the kind of force needed to stop that train. Now imagine that same train at a full stop, loaded with cargo, and the force needed to get it moving. Once the train starts rolling and building speed it takes less and less force to keep it moving, and more and more force to stop it.
Every action we take is like that train. The stealing employee who returns the dollar, and the alcoholic who refuses that first drink never set that train in motion. It doesn’t get the chance to build speed. Stopping is easiest before it starts.
The same is true for the habits you want to build and the goals you want to reach. The writer who always waits for tomorrow when there will be more time or more inspiration leaves the train parked on the tracks, wheels slowly rusting into place. But even small forces consistently applied day after day will cause movement. The writer who writes just 5 words a day, or a paragraph or page is constantly inching that train forward, allowing it to roll just a little. Even a slow roll is easier to keep going than a stopped train.
Every action or inaction we take makes further action either easier or harder. We’re always making the habits we want to have either easier or harder to continue, and the habits we don’t want to have either easier or harder to stop.
I haven’t written on this blog for over a year. I could give all kinds of reasons and justifications for this, but the simple truth is that I didn’t write. Posting today changes the direction of the momentum, and gives a tiny push to that stalled train. That’s true for every action or goal a person wants to take.
The man who wants to run 5 miles is much closer to that goal by running 50 feet than by putting it off another day. The woman who wants to learn a new language is closer to her goal if she learns just one word a day than if she waits until she has “time to start.” And the man who runs 50 feet a day, every day, is far more likely to run 55 feet, or 100 feet or a mile than the man who isn’t running at all. The woman who is learning one new word every day is more likely to learn 2 words, or 5, or a new phrase than the woman who is waiting for the perfect time to start.
The key is to just start doing something, and then keep doing it. As long as you keep taking small actions and don’t stop, momentum will build. The more you do something, the easier it becomes, whether it’s something you want to do, or something you don’t. It’s all those little actions and inactions both positive and negative that determine who you are and where you go. You decide through your actions which train you want to be on, and which train you want to leave rusting on the tracks.
Caught in a Game
The past couple months my best friend and I have been playing League of Legends together. Classified as an esport, teams of five people square off against each other to destroy the other team’s base. It’s a game of both wit and skill, and it’s addicting. I was reluctant to start playing in the beginning, because I know that when I start something I become very focused on it, and can easily lose sight of nearly everything else. I’ve avoided playing computer games for years because of that tendency in me. But now, I sometimes wake up thinking about strategies, or what champion I want to save up game points to get, and my friend is likely to call within moments of waking whenever he has a day free to ask if I want to play with him. He’s even more obsessed than I am, and has probably played twice as many games as I have over the same time period.
When I lived within driving distance of a fencing school (now the closest is an hour’s drive away, and on a schedule that makes it difficult for me to participate) I used to really enjoy learning the sport of fencing. I didn’t do it long enough to get really good, but it was so much fun, and I’d stay until the gym closed and the instructors were ready to call it quits practicing and learning. Fencing is often called “physical chess” and I think the mental aspect of it appealed to me almost as much as the physical. Many sports do have a mental aspect to them, where outsmarting your opponent can be a factor second only to outplaying them with your physical skill.
I enjoy putting both my body and my mind to the test, challenging myself and competing with myself or others. I’m always trying something. Yesterday for example, I remembered watching a karate class years ago learning a roll, where the students tumbled forward rolling across their shoulders and backs to land on their feet. It was different from your standard forward roll in gymnastics, and remembering watching them I tried both in my living room. Sometimes I’ll stand on my hands, or attempt to jump on or over something, just to see if I can. And puzzles. . . if someone tells me that there’s a problem or logic test that is particularly difficult to solve, you can bet I immediately start working on it.
So, seeing League of Legends as a challenge similar to these other pursuits may be an elaborate justification on my part for why I’ve spent so much time on it. After all, classified as a legitimate sport or not, it is still a computer game. It’s hard to ignore the prevailing bias that any kind of computer or video game is a mind-rotting, life-destroying waste of time. They’re just games. But aren’t physical sports games too? Isn’t chess just a game?
All animals play. Humans play. It’s even been found that play helps develop the brains of both animals and people. Sometimes that’s reported with the implied idea that it develops their brains for better, more worthwhile pursuits – that serious business of living. Games are separated from “real world” tasks. Whether written about video games, or physical sports, it’s often connected to how it improves their “real lives.” Everything gets compartmentalized. Beyond the scope of this single post and something I want to write about later is this compartmentalization in all aspects of our lives where everything is turned into preparation for something called life, rather than being seen as part of our lives.
But for now, I want to close with the still unfinished thought that maybe meeting challenges in any form (even in games) isn’t so much a distraction from life but an integral necessity of it.
To be continued. . .
Too Much Information and Losing Your Voice in the Crowd
This morning I had a thought – something I wanted to write about, but I have no idea now what it was. I went online to look something up and got washed away in the rapids of the information stream. Reading one piece of information after another I crammed so much into my head that it’s all sort of squished together without enough space in between to make any kind of coherent connections.
Obviously I’m writing a blog, since you’re reading it (actually I have two blogs now) and possibly you also write a blog or maintain a website or do other writing online. Maybe that’s how you found me. Many many people are writing, sharing their opinions, sharing articles, posting links and ever-multiplying the information available on any topic you can imagine. There are even countless websites, blogs, citations and articles of varying sorts referring to dealing with “information overload,” based on the sheer volume of information available today.
I thought, “What can I do that will add value, without adding clutter?” Some of those pages on information overload mentioned people who just don’t have enough time to read and make sense of documents and articles, so I thought, “That’s something I’m good at — what if I could provide a service that takes documents, reads them, and then summarizes, explains, and even fact-checks them for accuracy?” Then, I googled.
Immediately I found that there are already numerous automated programs that summarize documents for people. While they may not explain anything, or fact-check or research further when contradictory information surfaces, still it seems that any idea I have and any potentially original thought already exists in some form and is available at the click of a webpage button.
It’s frustrating to me. I want to organize and make sense of all this information, all these fascinating things that interest me, make it accessible and share my thoughts, but is it just creating more clutter for people to sift through?
I was writing this in a notebook rather than my computer to get away from all the information that already exists and be alone with my own thoughts, when I find a page of notes on something else I wanted to write about. The topic is egoism in writing, and there are some great quotes by George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, EB White and Joan Didion all garnered from pages at a fantastic webpage called Brain Pickings.
You have to have some ego to write a blog, because you’re saying that you have something to contribute; your thoughts are important enough to share — you have something to say. But when there is such a clamor of voices all saying something, and every one thinking they should be heard, at what point does it become pure confusion and just more noise?
I usually love that there is so much information at my fingertips. I find so many interesting things to read online, and I gorge myself sick on them; so much so that I’m often left with nothing to say myself. All these other thoughts, interesting new ideas, and cool things to think about are occupying my head. I link to some of them, and often think that I’ll write something later. But when later comes there is yet another feast of information in front of me. There’s so much to read and take in that processing and writing falls by the wayside, and with everything already available my voice doesn’t seem so important.
But there’s an idea I routinely come across in my reading and it makes sense. It’s an idea of finding a tribe — a group of people with whom your ideas resonate. These might be people who some call “kindred spirits” or maybe people who just get what you want to do and can help or listen. And sometimes they’re just the people who at that point in time want or need to hear what you have to say. They’re people whose goals or values align with yours in some way, and may help you learn or grow.
So, instead of a massive crowd of voices all drowning each other out, clusters (tribes) begin to form of people with similar interests, ideas or values.
That giant stream of information is still there, and can still drown you if you get caught in its currents. You can’t take it all in, and you can’t tame it or redirect its flow, but you can find those who are interested in seeing the river through your eyes, who want to hear how you’ve filtered the parts that most interest you. So, you find that tribe and share with them.
Maybe what I write, and what you write (if you do) doesn’t just add more noise and clutter even when it seems like that’s all it can do. Maybe it reaches specific people who are looking in all the voices for your voice (or my voice) in particular. Maybe there’s a set of people looking exactly for the insight or ideas that only you can give, and will bookmark or read what you say as eagerly as you do many others. Maybe every voice is important, at least to some others. I’d like to believe so anyway.
Seven Billion 
