Momentum.

Life is a game ruled by momentum.

You know Newton’s Third Law — an object in motion stays in motion, an object at rest stays at rest, yea yea yeah. One of those beautiful universal laws that applies at every scale to every moment in the grand mess of all existence.

Now take out object and replace it with human and the same is true.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit recently (the human kind). The kind that shapes the days, the weeks and the years. That makes tomorrow’s after-work jog easier for going on one today. Or that makes an episode of Orange Is The New Black turn into a lost Sunday evening (it’s soo good..!).

The opposite is true too. Skip one daily blog after 20 in a row and all of a sudden the 21st feels twice as hard. Or the beautiful flip side — build up the conviction to do 10 bad push-ups one day and next thing you know you’re busting out 50 every morning (not me yet). It’s a curse and a blessing.

I suppose all we really are is the accumulated momentum of our past choices. And it’s kinda the compound interest of those choices that separates the good from the great from the legends.

The legends themselves are the first to admit this. Seinfeld had his famous “don’t break the chain” quote about writing a joke every day and marking it on the calendar with an X early in his career. Muhammad Ali’s “the fight is won or lost far away from witnesses…” was on a poster in my college dorm.

Ultimately it’s about making great work a mundane habit of yours. And the secret is no secret, it is simply the art of making that very first choice.

There are two mistakes people (I) make when it comes to building momentum around great-making habits, especially early on (which is inherently the toughest part):

1. Thinking the first attempt needs to be some herculean feat

2. Giving up after missing a few

The ways to solve these are both obvious and non-trivial. You must start easy and build your way up. It is okay to start extremely slow and easy — you should. We overestimate what can be done in a week and underestimate what can be done in a decade.

Then once you’ve started, you must commit to not missing more than one or two in a row. This is why starting slow and easy is good, it makes missing harder. And it’s okay to miss one or two — it’s perfectly acceptable — as long as you get back. And if you completely fall off, start back at the beginning of the last paragraph.

(I’m not the expert here, I’ve just read James Clear).

Addiction is another familiar expression of this “human momentum” thing. We’ve all seen it, and we’ve all dealt with it personally (if you haven’t, you should be the one writing blog posts so we can learn how).

The world today is more addictive than it’s ever been before — most of the world’s problems used to be rooted in scarcity, today they’re rooted in abundance. And it will only become more addictive in the future, in every facet. It can be a bit scary.

But the way I like to think of it is that you can strive to become addicted to things that are good for you. Take pride in wiring your brain to be so thoroughly overjoyed by positive habits (exercise, building businesses, writing, art, whatever) that it feels painful to stop.

In an overstimulated world, oversaturated with easy access to counterproductive addictions like scrolling and drugs, the heroes of tomorrow will be those who are able to conquer the momentum of positive, productive addiction in the face of it all.

And the best part is, you can be a complete lazy shit-bag today and still make it out on top if you just… start.

That is momentum. It must be earned. It can be earned by anyone. Sometimes I wonder if the secret to life isn't just being really, really careful about which things we set in motion. Because once they're moving, they tend to keep moving.

Tomorrow you and I will both wake up and make a choice. That choice will have momentum, and your future self will be the inheritor.

Do them a favor and make it right.

Cheers,
Ramsey