Assumed audience: Folks interested in working effectively (adjacent to but distinct from “getting things done” and “productivity”). The focus here is on motivation and well-built habits.
David “underscore” Smith, in his post Accomplish One Thing:
On any day when I’m supposed to be working, I have developed the habit of looking back at my day and looking for at least one thing which I really accomplished that day (ideally something tangible or visible). I tend to think about this as I’m clearing up my desk, ready to return to home life. It really doesn’t matter how big or small that thing is, but there needs to be something which I can point to.
…
The goal here is not to make massive progress; it isn’t about getting back up to full speed again, going from 0 to 100 miles/hour in one swift step. It is about building up my working inertia again. Speed is useful, but inertia is powerful.
This resonates very strongly with me, and you should read the whole post, because I agree with his recommendations! Along the same lines, I wrote last week that I want this to be a year of “shipping”, and in my post announcing True Myth v8.2, I wrote:
…I really wanted to ship this. Shipping begets shipping. Momentum matters. Getting this version out the door got me excited, and I think it will be that much easier to turn around and get those other features out the door.
Just under fifteen years ago, I came down with a case of mono, which was bad enough that I had to go on short term disability leave from work and spent the better part of a month in bed. When the doctor cleared me to get back to exercising after a few months, I was so weak that I could barely finish running a mile, and the first time I tried, it took me about 14 minutes. Although I was not a runner then — indeed, getting back in shape from that was part of how I became a runner — I had always been able to run a mile at a much faster pace than that. Most healthy adults can walk a mile faster than that.
I started going to the gym every day after work to try to get back into shape, initially because I wanted to be able to play Ultimate with friends. I was glad to be getting stronger, but there were days I hated going to the gym. One of those sweltering mid-summer Oklahoma afternoons stuck in my memory unlike any other, though. I got off from work, and as I started driving away, I thought, “I really don’t feel it today. I think I’m going to skip it. One day will be fine, right?” I had a quiet mental debate, but I remember quite distinctly the conscious decision to go home instead of to go to the gym.
Then I got to the relevant turn: left to go home, and right to go to the gym. I surprised myself when I turned right to head to the gym, directly contrary to my conscious intention. I had trained myself to go work out, whether I felt like it or not, by way of many choices to go on other days I did not feel like it. Much as I consciously wanted not to go, a deeper part of me that I had been building up over the preceding months did want to go, because that deeper part wanted to be healthy and strong more than my inner monologue wanted to just take it easy that day.1
That day was not the day I became the kind of person who does the work to stay healthy, whether I feel like it or not. It was the day I noticed that I had become that kind of person. It was inertia at its best.
The same thing goes for many parts of life. If we get in the habit of eating meals together as a family, we will be likelier to stick with that even when life is busy. If I get in the habit of writing regularly, I will be likelier to stick with it even when I am tired and just want to go to bed. If I go out the door and run even on the days when the weather is terrible, I will be likelier to get out the door on days when I just feel a bit lethargic. If I make a habit of “shipping” throughout January and February and March, I will be likelier to keep that up in September and October and November even when I might feel “tired” as I come to the end of the year.
David Smith is right: Inertia is powerful. Momentum matters. Steady work will carry us much further than a speedy burst of activity here and there.
Notes
This dynamic between what we know consciously and what we know or can do unconsciously shows up in lots of places! ↩︎