inertia

the new year’s season invites a plethora of conversations about our new selves. new habits. new goals.

the glamorous ones are the dramatic ones. the ‘fresh start’ bias has us full of ambition for those impressive transformations.

don’t get me wrong. a time of reflection and setting new goals can be a powerful exercise – a needed one in fact – but perhaps detaching it from the new year’s hype might be even more powerful.

very inception like – hacking our hacking protocol.
re-evaluating our evaluation process.
setting new goals for our goal-setting system.

because ultimately, i think what is not taken into consideration is inertia. inertia likes the status quo – keeps us moving in the direction and pace we were already moving, or keeps us stagnant in the places we were stagnant. so if goal setting is working against the quick sand – the more dramatic the pivot, the more resistance.

another disclaimer – i like big hairy audacious goals as much as the next one, in fact, i actually love those. a lot more than the 1% pivot daily.

however, what i am finding, is that transformation that is sustainable has worked with inertia instead of against it.

can we leverage inertia?
ride the momentum of small pivots daily?
accumulate small wins and invest them in bigger ones?

make growth and process goals over singular event/destination goals?
prioritize progress over perfection?

i think the more regular my inventory process is, the more approachable my inflection points are. not that i have the perfect rule of life figured out, but with my propensity to stray, i wonder if i can catch small problems quickly?

slight detours before i find myself in completely different zip codes?

i won’t belabor curating a whole new take on habit formation because plenty of experts have spent more time in this headspace (start with Atomic Habits with James Clear for example).

but to start, maybe we evaluate where our inertia has us? stuck? steady? decaying? progressing?

and what’s the next right input?
seek first the kingdom.
daily bread.
march on.