INERTIA inTO ACTION
Many of us have a bunch of things that we want to do, and yet despite good intentions, most of them stay as vague ideas. For some people, it is even worse than that as, because of a lack of progress, those intentions become the source of negative internal feedback.
We are weighed down by a long list of our current actions, thoughts and feelings. Then, when we do have a bit of time, it’s much easier to scroll social media or sedate ourselves with a glass of wine and some binge-watching.
The issue is often one of inertia. Inertia can be defined as ‘a lack of activity or interest’, although perhaps more helpfully, in physics terms, it means ‘a force that keeps something in the same position’. Overcoming inertia is about overcoming that force and getting moving.
The seesaw below sums up our position. The weight of today’s ‘stuff’ is heavy and thoughts about the future are not clear enough to overcome them.
how do we overcome that inertia and build some momentum?
Momentum can be defined as ‘the force that keeps an object moving’.
So firstly, we'll need to invest a bit of time to think about what we want some momentum for. That means interrupting our existing habits and using our highly honed scrolling and web-searching skills to explore what we really want.
Because so many of our goals are vague intentions, it is often important to discover whether we actually want them or not. Asking ourselves some simple questions will help to build some momentum.
Here’s an example:
These questions start to convert a vague notion into something more solid – a well-formed outcome. This process starts to add some weight to the right of the seesaw.
Creating new behaviours is not simple, so we will need to do some more work to explore why we want the goal. What is important to us about achieving it? What does it enable for us? What impact does it have… on us… on our loved-ones… our colleagues? If we'd lived with this goal for 3, 6, 12 months, how would that improve our life and the lives of people we care about?
If when we ask ourselves these questions, we can find no compelling reasons, then great news! We can let this vague notion go and so concentrate on something we do really want.
Now, when we find exciting and meaningful reasons why, we know that this goal is congruent with our values and beliefs. When we can attach our beliefs and values to an Outcome, it makes it more powerful, more purposeful and therefore more likely to stick.
Getting to this point is great progress, but to move further forward we'll need to think about where we are right now in relation to that goal.
We can acknowledge where we are against a goal, but we can also think a little more deeply.
At this point we've had a chance to consider the goal in the broadest sense, taking in the whole landscape of our goals and wishes, beliefs, challenges, and potential limitations.
Now it is time to think about what resources we have to start the action plan.
When we do this well, we can build powerful outcomes and remove or mitigate any blockers in our path. The inertia seesaw can tip, momentum is on our side, and we move towards our goal.
Staying on track
In The Habit Mechanic, Dr Jon Finn talks elegantly of the ‘knowledge > skill> habit’ pathway. In martial arts we use the similar metaphor of Mind to Muscle. We learn a technique, we drill a technique, we drill the technique in multiple scenarios and eventually, after much practice, it emerges when we need it – the technique has moved from the Mind (knowledge) to the Muscle (habit).
There is no short cut to a new behaviour. It takes practice and effort, but we can make things easier for ourselves. This is why it is so important to think widely about a new goal, and why it is important to us before we commit.
In our next blog we'll explore how we can stay on track.