How to Get Momentum

Momentum is a term used in physics. It's meaning presupposes motion. It doesn't apply to something or someone who isn't moving; who's just resting.

You can be immobile - unable to move, inert - not moving regardless of the reason, or in motion.

For physicists, however, momentum only applies if you're moving already.

 

To understand momentum, you need to think of it in terms of multiplication. It's the product - the result - of multiplying the mass of a body - the thing that's in motion - times its velocity, or speed. For the layman, you can think of it as the driving force you observe by a thing that's moving.

 

Train

Think about a steam locomotive. You may have to use your imagination a bit or recall an old Western, or watch some videos to appreciate this. The wheels are joined together by rods, such that when one set of wheels moves, all of the others do as well.

At first, the wheels turn very slowly. Gradually they speed up. Before long, the train is racing down the tracks, and the wheels are turning so fast that you almost can't see them. It makes you wonder if there won't come a time when they fall off.

In order to stop the train, it must decelerate some distance from the station. That's because of momentum. It can't just stop because the force that propels keeps pushing it, and to slow it down there has to be another force applied to it. 

 

Here's another example.

 

Jet

Suppose you fly from a city where you livee to another one, perhaps for a vacation. You board the plane. You're instructed to fasten your seatbelt.

Why?

It's so that as the aircraft changes speed (velocity) you're not thrown out of your seat.

When the jet rolls down the runway, you may feel yourself pressed back against your seat. You start out only a few miles per hour. At around 120 mph, your plane takes off. It continues to accelerate until it reaches cruising altitude and speed. Most jet-powered airliners are capable of speeds that exceed 500 mph. 

Perhaps you've noticed that when your plane begins its descent that you feel a slight tendency to "fall" forward. That's because your mommentum is still a little faster than the plane's. As your plan touches down on the runway, you'll be aware of a sudden force that seems to push you forward. That, too, is because of the momentum in your body. As the plane decelerates, so do you, but not quite as quickly. You're still going a little bit faster, which is why if you didn't have your seatbelt on, then you would be propelled forward out of your seat.

 

Car

You may have experienced this in your car. You're driving along, and for one reason or another - someone cuts you off, or an animal runs in front of you, or you realize a bit late that your exit is just ahead and you need to slow down so you won't miss it. You hit your brakes harder than usual. You feel yourself pitch forward a bit as your car suddenly slows down. The only thing that keeps you in your seat is your seatbelt, and that's because your body, and not just your car, have momentum.

 

All of these examples illustrate the force that drives you forward. It's the thing that's moving you, and that movement is consistent. When you're moving, it's imperceptible. It's the new normal. We call it homeostasis. It means keeping things the same. It took acceleration to get you there, but now that that's where you are, you don't notice it. You only notice it when you try to slow down, and that's because of the force that's pushing you and which sustains your movement.

 

Homeostasis

Homeostatis isn't a bad thing in and of itself. It depends on what it refers to. It can be a good thing if it means that you're consistently doing what you want or need to do. It's only a bad thing if you need to change what you're doing to something better; that is, it's preventing you from changing instead of helping you.

For instance, if it's your habit to exercise according to a pre-determined workout schedule, then continuing to follow it, provided you're not sick or injured, is a good thing. But if you could win an Olympic gold medal as a couch potato, the homeostasis isn't doing you any favors.

As you've seen, not all movement - even consistent movement - is a good thing. There needs to be the right kind - the kind that gives you a positive result. If the result you're getting isn't what you want, then it means that you have to change.

 

Change

Change isn't as scary as it sounds. It sounds scary because the tendency is to look at the end result - the thing that you want - and assume that you have to do something radical to achieve it. The reason you feel that way is because you're overlooking momentum. A small change applied over a long period of time can create massive results.

The tendency to overlook momentum comes from the feeling that you can or hope to get results overnight, but when you factor in time, then the amount of change required to get that big result is substantially reduced.

For instance, suppose you want to be able to run a mile. If you've never done it before, then it may seem like an impossible task. You may be thinking, "I can't even run to the end of the block." Thinking like that reflects the "all or nothing" perspective - the one that says, "If I can't do it today, then I'll never be able to." But there's a comparatively simple - even easy way to do it. It's by training over a long period of time.

How long? You could do it in 37 weeks -about nine months.

 

In the US, a mile is about 12 blocks, and so if you jogged/walked three times per week and added no more than 10% of what you did the previous week to the new week, then you could do it. (Ten percent is the maximum amount of increase that sensible trainers recommend.)

When I was in the Air Force, I knew a guy who went from zero to a mile and a half by running between telephone poles. That distance is much less than a city block - about 100'-120', or 40 yards apart. Could you jog 40 yards? It's probably less distance than it is from your car to the front of the grocery store. Even if you had to walk some of that way, you'd probably surprise yourself by making it.

What would your training weeks look like?

If during each workout, you ran or walked the same distance, then in Week 1, you'd run/walk 40 yards altogether, and then add a mere four yards to the following week's total distance. Four yards is 10% of the previous week. In Week 19, you'd still only be covering 220 yards per week, less than the length of a football field each day, but the following week, you'd add 22 yards. At this point, you can probably begin to see the impact of momentum. 

At 24 weeks, which is about six months into your program, you'd run/walk 354 yards during that week. At 30 weeks, it would be 627 yards.

Do you see how easy this is?

At this point, you could start to get creative. Instead of running or walking roughly 312 yards each day, you could vary it - and by the way, this isn't the only way to do it.

For instance, on Day 1, you could run/walk 112 yards. Then on Day 2, cover 424 yards, and on Day 3 do the remaining 91 yards. That would add up to 627 yards, but it would start to prepare you for something exciting.

At 36 weeks, about nine months after you started, you could run or walk a mile. How is that possible, especially as you would only be covering a little more than 1000 yards for the week?

Exercise experts suggest that you do a long run, or ride - if you're cycling - that is no more than twice as long as your longest workout. So in this 1011 yard week, you could run/walk 880 yards on Day 1, 50 yards on Day 2, and the remaining 81 yards on Day 3. That would set you up for a mile in Week 37 because 2 x 880 yards is one mile.

The point isn't to turn you into an athlete. Instead, it's to show you how easy it is to create momentum by making a small change consistently. In this example, you can see how easy it is to begin at a standstill and then slowly build up to a mile, a distance that right now you might not think you could ever do.

 

That's a long time! 

You may balk at the idea because nine months seems like such a long time, and you don't want to wait that long. But what happens? Either you do nothing, or you try to do too much too fast.

A good way to look at the first objection is to remember something that Earl Nightingale, the "father" of the personal development movement, said many years ago. He said, "Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway."

It's easy to overlook the fact that the time will pass anyway. Instead, we take it for granted. 

John Lennon once said that "life happens when you're making other plans." We're good at planning for the future, but not living in the present. Not dealing with the time that's passing anyway.

People of a certain age are often surprised when they have another birthday. Children don't think they happen often enough, but adults feel that they occur far too often. This is due in part to our perception of time. At 10-years old, one year is a tenth of your life. At 50, that same year is 2% of the years that you've lived.

Pick a period of time from now: three months; six months, a year. If you could change something, what would it be?

The time will pass whether you make a small change or not.

 

Get started

The hardest part is getting started, but the next hardest part is to keep doing it until you create momentum; until it no longer feels like effort, but instead feels like homeostasis - effortless.

When a locomotive, or a plane, or a car gets up to speed, it takes less effort - less force - to keep it at that speed. Force is only necessary to change it, either to slow it down or speed it up.

Sir Isaac Newton described this in his First Law of Motion: "A body" - it could be a train, a plane, or even you - "remains in the state of rest" - that is, doing nothing other than what it has been doing, whatever that may be - "or uniform motion in a straight line unless and until an external force acts upon it."

When you take action to change, that is a force. When the tiller adds coal to the fire, that causes the fire to burn hotter which causes the steam locomotive to go faster. 

When a jet reaches cruising altitude, the pilot reduces the engine speed so that the aircraft doesn't exceed its design limits.

When you reach the speed limit in your car, then you should back off of the accelerator. Indeed, that pedal is so named because it's designed to increase your speed. But it takes less engine power to maintain your speed than it does to get you there in the first place.

You'll know this to be true in your house. If it's cold, then it takes more energy to warm it up than it does to keep it warm once it reaches the temperature that you want it to be.

 

Momentum is your friend

Momentum is your friend if you use it in the right way. But it can also work against you. Just as homeostasis can be reached for positive things, it can also be achieved for negative ones.

For instance, you may have a morning routine where you check certain social media platforms in a particular order. If one gets left out or you can't access it for some reason, then you feel unfulfilled - even angry or deprived. It may also be your habit to repeat the cycle to see if anyone has replied to or liked your comments.

Maybe you're a news junkie. You always check certain news sources, read the latest articles by your favorite columnists, or see what cartoons have been drawn by those artists you like.

Of course, there's no harm in communicating with people via social media, consuming news, opinion, or humor as long as it doesn't govern your life. But when it takes over, when it dominates your thinking, and therefore your behavior, then it's a serious issue. You want your habits - your hommeostasis - to lead you to positive and meaningful experiences, not run your life, and not make you unproductive and miserable.

There's no middle ground here. The lack of fulfillment that you feel comes from spending your time, energy, and even money on things that are incapable of rewarding you the way you want to be.

 

At the beginning of this article, I described momentum as the driving force behind all movement - that is, whatever direction you're going in, there is a force, a pressure, an influence that's pushing you in that direction. And even though the definition in physics applies only to things that are moving, in "real" life, you can engage in behaviors that will induce inertia. In other words, you can decide to exert the force necessary to keep you at a near standstill. And there are many people who do just that.

To do so, however, is to pursue a negative homeostasis. Although quietness and solitude can be beneficial if used wisely, becoming a couch potato benefits no one. Obviously, it makes more sense to use your energy to move forward than it does to sit still.

One reason you may be tempted to sit still is that is feels like less work, but as you know already, you can't trust your feelings - at least not in the absence of any other input; and that's because how you feel changes constantly.

For instance, you might be enjoying your drive on a pleasant day through the countryside when someone suddenly roars up behind you and nearly forces you off the road when they pass. Whether you're the most serene person on the planet or not, that experience will change how you feel. It will elicit a reaction from you. Adrenaline will pour into your blood stream, and it will take a little while for things to return to normal.

For some people, the experience will be more traumatic than for others, but you won't come away from it untouched.

Sitting still - doing nothing - requires effort.

If you've been working hard, and you're so tired that you barely have the strength to cook dinner, then flopping on the couch to watch TV for awhile is understandable., But if you get a good night's rest on Friday, for example, and then sit in your jammies all day while watching TV on Saturday, then that's quite different. In the first instance, you lack the energy to do anything else, but in the second, you're choosing to be inert when you could be moving.

 

Positive momentum

So how do you create positive momentum?

The temptation will be to try to accomplish too much too fast. 

In the running example, it took 37 weeks - about nine months - to go from zero to one mile. Those who are inexperienced in these things, and even those who are more seasoned, would be tempted to reduce that time.

At first, they might try covering much more distance than what was recommended - say a hundred or two hundred yards, and they might get away with it at the beginning. But then they'd find that they were so winded that they couldn't function normally for the rest of the day, or that they were so sore the following day they couldn't walk normally. Some would give up at this point.

Others might run on consecutive days, especially if they felt okay, instead of giving their bodies a day of rest in-between workouts. Of those, some would get shin splints or inflame their plantar fascia. And those who believed the myth that there's  no gain without pain might cause long term injuries to themselves.

Those most likely to succeed are the ones who make a small change consistently. One small consistently will cause positive momentum. Progress will be gradual, but because you're not stressing over the results, you'll be more likely to keep doing it. 

The tortoise has more to teach us than the hare. The hare tries to do it all at once, but the tortoise wins because they do a little bit every day. No fuss. No muss.

You can achieve positive momentum by making one small change and doing it consistently, whether it's to give up drinking diet soda (pop), running or walking a few hundred yards per week, or saving a couple of percent of your earnings every pay day.

Decide the result that you want, and then ask yourself what one small change you can make that will take you in that direction.

Then commit to making that change consistently.