Why You Need to Use the Power of Momentum
Momentum is the only way to make it in this life.
What do we mean by momentum? Momentum is defined as ‘mass in motion’ — how is this related to our life? Because momentum is something that builds — through movement, through constant and consistent action. It is something that builds and culminates into success over a long time. The problem is, people are struggling to maintain it… Today we’re going to look at momentum, how you can implement it and how you can work to sustain it.
What really is momentum?
So we can fully grasp the concept of momentum I’d like to introduce a brilliant passage from ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins. ‘Picture a huge, heavy flywheel — a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Now imagine that your task is to get that flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible. Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing and, after two or three hours of persistent effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn.’
‘You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster, and with continued great effort, you move it around a second rotation. You keep pushing in a consistent direction. Three turns… four… five… six… the flywheel builds up speed… seven… eight… you keep pushing… nine… ten… it builds momentum… eleven… twelve… moving faster with each turn… twenty… thirty… fifty… a hundred. Then, at some point — breakthrough!’
‘The momentum of the thing kicks in in your favour, hurling the flywheel forward, turn after turn… whoosh!… its own heavy weight working for you. You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn of the flywheel building upon work done earlier, compounding your investment of effort. A thousand times faster, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand. The huge heavy disk flies forward, with almost unstoppable momentum.’
‘Now suppose someone came along and asked, “What was the one big push that caused this thing to go so fast?” You wouldn’t be able to answer, it’s just a nonsensical question. Was it the first push? The second? The fifth? The hundredth? No! It was all of them added together in an overall accumulation of effort applied in a consistent direction. Some pushes may have been bigger than others, but any single heave — no matter how large — reflects a small fraction of the entire cumulative effect upon the flywheel.’
How amazing is that? Collins continues to identify how companies that seem to blow up overnight are due to this effect — the media and everyone else will swarm once momentum as reached its peak — but a lot of work as gone into to get there; even if no one else saw it. Thus, the way I see momentum and it’s involvement within our lives is the amalgamation and cumulative growth compounding over and over until you reach success! The problem is that people will try push in one direction for a bit and get nowhere so they keep trying other directions and different flywheels — they don’t maintain focus to build the momentum they need!
How do we decide what direction to push?
You need to spend time with this. My thesis for success in life is; educate, plan and execute. I suppose, to a certain extent, you could consider your education and planning part of the pushing process. However, the real pushing of the flywheel begins in the execution — constant and consistent execution. You need to take your time and really assess what you are wanting from life. How do you define success? What does success mean to you? Who’s life would you like to emulate? Where do you see yourself in 30 years time? You need to think deeply about these questions.
Vision
Take a night off, eliminate distractions — get a pen and paper, and start writing. Write everything you want to achieve in life, where and whom you want to be. Maybe you already know, you’re just afraid to say it. Now is the time, now is the time to start — do not fear the unknown. Soon enough you’ll have a vision in mind. Mine is within the entrepreneurial field — I want to be a successful entrepreneur; broadly speaking. So that’s my vision, now we have a vision you can begin to educate.
Educate
Educate is exactly what you think it is. Whatever you’re goal is, you must educate yourself on that life thoroughly to make sure it is for you. If it’s having a family — buy books on parenthood, consume content by parents, involve yourself completely in that world and assess if it’s to your liking. I bought every book I could find on business and entrepreneurship and just starting reading. I now read 10 books per month and with every book my excitement for entrepreneurship increases and increases. If you are lucky you too will really enjoy the education phase. If you do then you know you’ve found the right field and you can move onto the planning phase.
Plan
This too is a very exciting phase. Here, you are going to be refining your goals — making them simple and easy to grasp. The rule of thumb to follow is — can you explain your goal to a five-year-old, and then that five-year-old explain it to another five-year-old and have both of them understand your goal. That’s how clear it all needs to be. A bit like Inception — you need to get to the root of your goal to allow your mind to work on a solution in the background.
Once you have a refined list of goals you can now begin to plan — by breaking those goals down into manageable chunks. You need to know what you have to be doing each month, each week, each day, to hit your 1, 3, 5 and 10-year goals (as a guide). This is where the direction comes in. The decision to write articles came from this process — because creating content is an important part of entrepreneurship. What you are essentially doing is creating a tentative life plan. You are planning your route, the path you will take to get to your goal. In the book ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ by Wallace D. Wattles — wisdom was defined as the ability to find the shortest path from point A to point B. Deciding the best way to get from where you are now, to where you want to be. This will change as you go through life but you should be able to develop a plan to get you started as you will have learnt about the paths others took through your education phase. Also, each of these phases, while done individually, continue on for the rest of your life. You need to be constantly and consistently educating, planning and executing every day. Now to execution.
Execute
It’s the simplest phase and the one everyone falls on. Maybe it’s a fear of failure, maybe it’s lack of determination — I’m sure it’s different for every person. Nonetheless, execution is very simply — executing your plan. The best way to do this is to develop a system, my system is as follows; I have my goals that are categorised into main themes. Prior to each month, week and day, I complete a list of objectives to tackle within that month, week and day — because I have my goals and plan laid out I know exactly what I need to focus on each day. I execute on that every day. Every single day I contribute to my goal 30 years from now. And it’s exciting! I’m building a future I can look forward to. I’m investing my effort which will compound and cumulate into success. I’m pushing my flywheel, but no one’s watching me because it’s not moving very fast yet. But it will soon. All you need to do is have a system of attack, a way you can measure yourself to make sure you are executing effectively.
How can we maintain momentum?
You need to start small, to develop your character; your discipline, your intelligence, integrity, determination. Write a list of character traits you feel you need to complete your goal. Now, research how to improve on them — focus on you for a little while. Develop your character, as mentioned above — develop a system that works for you. Then there’s no more to say — you just need to do. You just need to execute. Get out there and enjoy it! Enjoy the process, have the ability to act on a micro-scale (every day) but with the ability to think macro-scale (years into the future). Do a favour for the future version of yourself in 40 years — how proud would they be of you working hard every day pushing that flywheel?
In conclusion, you can read articles on how to improve your life every day, but really you just need to start working. Begin with your vision, find out what you want. Then educate yourself to make sure that you actually want that. Develop a plan of action. Execute! It’s that simple, you just need to pick yourself up and get going. However small, make sure you are actioning on your goal every single day — the momentum will eventually pick up in your favour. You have got this, you just need to keep going. Make your future self proud. Thank you.
