MO(RE)MENTUM

Habits have never made much sense to me. At least in the way they’ve been talked about in books like Atomic Habits, where they are more complex tasks that involve conscious effort to accomplish like going to the gym or eating healthy. To me, habits are things like putting my right leg in my pants before my left or washing my hands after going to the bathroom. Cultivating these actions I want in life takes conscious effort no matter how ingrained they are.

The mental model I prefer for these sorts of activities is momentum.

Momentum has two key aspects:

1. Gaining momentum takes more effort than maintaining momentum.
2. Maintaining momentum involves matching drag/friction with effort and avoiding collisions.

This concept helps me frame actions that I want to take.

GAINING MOMENTUM

What are some real life examples of things that take extra effort to gain momentum on?

• Starting to floss has the initial momentum hurdle of bleeding gums, but once you get over that it’s less painful to maintain.
• Starting lifting weights results in extra soreness that decreases as you lift more as well as the education hurdle of knowing what to do.
• Eating healthy and reducing sugar intake has the hurdle of initial sugar cravings.
• Moving to an ergonomic keyboard has a hurdle of figuring out where the fuck your fingers go.

These are all things that take a bit of extra effort to start, but take less effort once moving. Acknowledging that the initial effort is greater than what it will take to maintain has been helpful for me in getting over those initial hurdles, as has identifying what the initial challenge will be and preparing for it.

MAINTAINING MOMENTUM

The second aspect of momentum that I resonate with for activities is identifying desired momentum I want and calculating the effort needed to overcome the drag and plan for obstacles. Here are some examples:

• For flossing, I’d like to maintain a daily flossing routine so I ensure I always have floss next to the sink I use during wind down. I shouldn’t have to search for it.
• My home gym makes the effort of getting to the gym very low, and making my only consistent goal for lifting to be to go at least once a week to at least maintain gains sets the bar low and easy to maintain and not dissuade myself when life gets in the way. I typically end up going much more than this but that just the cherry on top!
• For eating healthy, buying only healthy groceries at the store makes eating healthy relatively trivial (same goes for abstaining from purchasing alcohol)

For me, this framing is extremely helpful. All you’re trying to do is set a bar for how much momentum is acceptable for something then defining the effort and removing obstacles where possible!