Inertia

My son was working on his science homework the other day and there was a multiple-choice question regarding inertia.  Interestingly, none of the answers were right on point so we had to choose the least wrong answer, much like decisions we make everyday. The concept of inertia is essentially that an object in motion remains in motion until an equal or opposite force is applied against it. If you roll a ball on a flat surface it will roll until friction and gravity stop it. 

I got to thinking about my businesses and financial plans and those of my clients, and decided that inertia is a key to success in any undertaking. An object at rest remains at rest. Any idea or process un-begun will never get done. Anything started carries with it its own momentum and creates actions, activities or decisions as it rolls along. Each action and decision keeps the ball moving along – sometimes with little effort, sometimes with Herculean effort – but it moves along nonetheless. Perhaps it is one of the reasons certain people get an inordinate amount accomplished and often do not seem ridiculously harried in the process.

I have often referred to my personal and business life as an effort to keep an ever-increasing amount of plates spinning. A better analogy is that we are developing an ever-increasing amount of positive inertia. It may not always feel that way, but it’s certainly a far better way to frame it if we want to use it to our advantage. How can we use this natural law to our benefit, to channel its power into your life and mine? One step is to recognize it. Upon reflection you will likely see patterns in your life where you created a certain activity and the activity took on a life of its own, good or bad. One thing leads to another and eventually one of three things occur. The project or process is completed, if it is a project that has an end, or you create infrastructure and systems to manage and integrate the new activity into your daily existence (like a good exercise program, for instance). Or, after the initial enthusiasm has worn off, friction and gravity cause the activity, goal, project, exercise regime, to die an uncompleted or unfulfilled death. 

A few keys will help insure our success in developing positive inertia in our financial and business lives:

Be selective about the things you start. We can only manage so much momentum at any one time. We can increase our capacity, but there is still a capacity that we reach. Wherever we are on the curve as far as our ability to manage the big mo is where we must begin to expand it, whether we are self employed or Microsoft Corporation. But don’t waste energy and positive momentum by creating projects that are unlikely to be completed. There is another natural law at work here; that any one of your activities that creates friction and negative momentum affects all of the activities and projects that are in your world. That may seem obvious as you read it, but few people bring that idea to consciousness. 

If you look at all of your activities, projects or financial practices, would you find any that are contrary to your stated objectives? If so, can you systematize or change them to make them consistent with your stated objectives? If you cannot or will not, why are you doing them?

There is a concept referred to as zero-based thinking; if there is anything in your life you would not do over, get out of it as efficiently and expediently as possible. The best way to do that is to be critical and think through those things that will utilize valuable time and financial resources before you enter into them. This is almost always less expensive than stopping momentum on a wayward project, because an equal and opposite force is needed to end a project once it has begun. It’s like throwing out a light anchor on your ship. If you throw out enough, the whole ship stops. Even one or two, thrown to the side, will change the direction of your ship, sometimes so subtly you do not realize it until you are well off course.