The Power of Momentum

Stay in momentum and you might surprise yourself. Biba Kayewich

If it seems difficult to get yourself to do things you want to and believe you should do, it may be time to harness the power of momentum.

Often, we get stuck in habitual patterns of energy expenditure and motion. Lying on the couch all day tends to encourage further lounging. Conversely, once you get started tidying up, for example, you tend to feel naturally spurred on to continue.

Isaac Newton famously said: “An object that is at rest will tend to stay at rest. An object that is in motion will tend to stay in motion.”

This tendency or urge to continue on is called momentum, and you can use its power to your advantage.

Momentum of the Mind

Not only can physical action build momentum, but mental activity can do so as well. If you’ve made habitual certain negative thoughts toward the things you want to be doing, those thoughts have probably gained momentum over time. Identify those that may be holding you back and replace your “soundtrack” with something more positive.

One easy way to do this is to state the exact opposite of the negative idea in your mind. For example, if you regularly tell yourself, “I never have the energy to work out,” replace that with, “I have more than enough energy to carry me through my workout.”

You might also try to look for the good and positive in life a bit more often. You can always find something to appreciate, and this habit also builds momentum.

Start Tiny

Consider those pesky tasks that have been lingering on your to-do list for an extended period of time. You know the ones. When you think about them, you sense an invisible force of resistance to doing them. The reasons you’re avoiding these tasks can vary, but one surefire way to reduce this resistance is to simply start.

Suppose you’ve got an overwhelming task that you really want to tackle, such as cleaning out your closet. You may have needed to do this for a long time. Everything’s disorganized, you struggle on a daily basis to find something to wear, many items don’t fit or have worn out, and you don’t have a solid sense of what you have and what you need.

In your mind, you’ve built this up into a monumental task that it’s possible you may even fail at ever doing. Ignore all that and simply pick one item to put away properly. This one tiny action will immediately begin to cut through the resistance you’ve fostered. You may even find yourself reaching for a second item to put away.

At the very least, you’ll have developed a tiny action that you can easily repeat, over and over across time, until the task is complete. More than likely, at some point, you’ll find yourself tackling what remains in one fell swoop.

Celebrate Wins

Even that tiny act of putting one item away in your closet deserves a celebration. While we often tend to have no problem beating ourselves up for the things we’re not doing, we tend to not celebrate or even notice those we are managing to do. Shift your tendency to notice the progress you’re making in your productivity.

Utilize Habits

A significant percentage of your day is spent performing habitual actions. You can leverage your positive habits to help you make progress on the tasks you’ve been avoiding. For example, perhaps you want to go for a walk each morning but you just can’t seem to move your body out the door.

Take a habit that you do each day without fail, such as brushing your teeth, and add the habit of lacing up your sneakers to that habit. Every day, after you brush your teeth, you’re going to lace up your shoes. That brings you one step closer to walking out the door for that walk. If that isn’t enough to get you to actually do it, however, identify the next tiny step you would take in order to go for a walk and add that on to the shoe-lacing habit.

You can utilize your new habits throughout your day, as long as you don’t try to add too many new habits at once.

The Night Before

Each evening, before winding down, take a few minutes to think about the next day and the most important task you would like to accomplish. Before settling in, take one or two minutes to begin that task. The first minute or two of a task may be something as simple as opening a blank document on your computer, setting out pots and pans to follow a new recipe, or picking out your workout clothes. Set up and leave out the work you’ve done in that very short period of time for you to simply continue tomorrow.

You might find that engaging in this high-priority task the next day is much easier now that you’ve already gotten past the hump of starting. You’ve awakened with momentum already in progress.