Momentum dominates effort.

[Movere]

Action is the way forward. So, we must give 110% effort and "take massive action" all day every day, right?!
RIGHT?! LET'S GO!!!!!!
No.
Momentum matters more than effort.

Try to stop a runaway tractor trailer going down a mountain. Try really hard. Splat. Momentum matters more than effort.
Try beating Tiger Woods in golf. Try beating LeBron James in basketball. In terms of effort, they play casually and you sweat blood. The pros win easily because, yes, momentum matters more than effort.

How about every person who has tried to break a bad habit and failed? Momentum matters more than effort.

Look at any area of life and you see that momentum always beats effort. And yet, curiously, it is effort that's commonly lauded and said to be the key to personal development and life. We need minimal effort to do anything, of course, but what people don't tell you is that effort has strongly diminishing returns.

Effort has a cost--energy! Thus, no, we don't need "110% effort," because that would leave us with a negative amount of energy soon thereafter. People glorify maximum, all-out effort; it's honored universally, but it's a woeful strategy for creating the greatest returns in life. And this is why:

We can generate momentum with little effort, but great effort does not always generate an equivalent amount of success or momentum.

(Copy paste from a book «The Magic of Momentum»)

 

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[MakeItHappen]

IMO momentum is a powerful psychological force that should be used to the maximum.

If you feel stuck start taking small steps in the right direction to build momentum. If you have no momentum and you try to go 100 steps at once your subconscious mind is way more likely to conduct self-sabotaging behavior.

You can think of momentum as compounding.... small steps will turn into huge steps. Sometimes what is stopping you is your ambition which demands to start with huge steps.

Now, if you can take huge steps right from the beginning good for you. But if this strategy has failed you repeatedly in the past try to take a couple of small steps to begin with.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I definitely see the point but not sure I necessarily agree. Effort is needed to create momentum through compounding. Why can Tiger Woods destroy me on the golf course? Years of effort which has compounded into momentum.

A better analogy I like to use are systems vs effort ....

Put Usain Bolt on a tricycle and you can beat him. His effort, and hence, momentum, has been marginalized by a deficient system.

Leverage your talent in a job, and you're pedaling on a tricycle. Leverage your talent in entrepreneurship and you have a chance to get off the tricycle.

Ask yourself, what system are you working withing, before you make an effort to generate momentum?

System / Effort / Momentum

If your choice of system is poor, the rest becomes handicapped.

 

[MRiabov]

Oh, what surprisingly good advice. Maybe it's a solution to some of my problems...

 

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[socaldude]

I was actually thinking about this the other day.

I don’t think most people’s problem is momentum. It’s the effort.

Most people don’t even read.

But once you have something like a vector in physics where you have direction and momentum. That’s very powerful.

People fail to make any progress because they are essentially irredimible addicts. They’re addicted to psychological forces that drive them to useless behaviors and perceptions.

 

[Movere]

I definitely see the point but not sure I necessarily agree. Effort is needed to create momentum through compounding. Why can Tiger Woods destroy me on the golf course? Years of effort which has compounded into momentum.

A better analogy I like to use are systems vs effort ....

Put Usain Bolt on a tricycle and you can beat him. His effort, and hence, momentum, has been marginalized by a deficient system.

Leverage your talent in a job, and you're pedaling on a tricycle. Leverage your talent in entrepreneurship and you have a chance to get off the tricycle.

Ask yourself, what system are you working withing, before you make an effort to generate momentum?

System / Effort / Momentum

If your choice of system is poor, the rest becomes handicapped.

Sure and you can use or create a system that is related to your long term goals and dreams and put effort in the direction to that goal daily until you achieved that goal, often problem with productivity lies not in laziness or whatever, but in system and belief system which can be combined (system or blueprint that effectively supports your new belief system for example) in my opinion, if a person wants to achieve good physique for example he can focus on simply showing up and doing bare minimum everyday (one pushup/squat/pullup) without skipping days, but momentum works such way, that after that bare minimum you wanna do another rep and another and another rep which compounds into "effortless" reps/sets because action creates motivation, even a very ridiculously little action, that can compound into another and another and another action, that if you do (anyone can, because it's very easy) everyday without skipping (skipping is ridiculously hard, because action is too small) person can add up to his belief system that he can workout which means he's an athletic person, which means he should create a system for his workouts and etc.
You can do the same approach with everything in your life (business, relationships, writing, meditation and etc) for example:
Searching/writing/brainstorming about one problem in your business everyday.
Writing 50 words of a book everyday.
Writing one thing you're grateful for in your relationship with someone everyday.
Doing one breath of mindfulness everyday.
Reading one page of a book everyday.
You can create ANY habit you want in ANY area of you life, because at this point everyone is creative.
The advantage of this system is that it's very impossible to skip and stop at only one rep of a habit (but you can stop if you want) and very easy to get engaged with the activity

 

[Movere]

Oh, what surprisingly good advice. Maybe it's a solution to some of my problems...

Of course!
You can solve any problem step by step without any attachment to your current level of motivation by taking very small steps

 

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[Movere]

IMO momentum is a powerful psychological force that should be used to the maximum.

If you feel stuck start taking small steps in the right direction to build momentum. If you have no momentum and you try to go 100 steps at once your subconscious mind is way more likely to conduct self-sabotaging behavior.

You can think of momentum as compounding.... small steps will turn into huge steps. Sometimes what is stopping you is your ambition which demands to start with huge steps.

Now, if you can take huge steps right from the beginning good for you. But if this strategy has failed you repeatedly in the past try to take a couple of small steps to begin with.

Absolutely!
You got the main point, you can take small steps everyday that will turn into bigger steps and the progress that is far beyond your expectations in long-term
I don't personally like to focus on "30 day challenges" (speed) or "30 minutes of a particular activity" (power) because it limits momentum in my opinion if you focus on such systems on long term, because it creates unessential resistance to the activity especially if you feel anxious, stressed, frustrated "I'm tired, why do this thirty minute meditation or work on my business for couple of hours" and if you skip one day in the 30 day challenge you can also be frustrated because "Damn, I lost my streak" and if this two systems combined, which happens very often it's a double resistance and guilty.
Sure, you can focus on that to experiment and test something in your life, but in long-term the focus on direction everyday is most effective (IMO) and you are most likely to do what you just did, cause reading one word in a book will lead to the second word and a whole page, then two, five, ten pages of a book.
There will be no resistance to one word/page of a book everyday in short and long-term both and over time it definitely kills all the resistance making activity habitual, also, why focus only 30 days on something, that takes years to achieve?
To create a stable habit it takes hundreds of a days of consistency and showing up, but a good news, over time resistance decreases to goddamn zero.
Someone who lifted weight for years will feel euphoria doing his workouts, because it's habitual, rewarding, zero resistance and only thing left is: love to the activity.
Such an absurd example maybe, but someone who was on Slowlane for years no matter the hatred towards his life will feel negatively comfortable with his life and path due to a lot of factors, the same with addictions and also bad relationships, it can be created through momentum and broken through momentum, even a small situation, for example MJ DeMarco met this guy with a Lamborghini when he was a teenager, this one situation created a whole spectrum of momentum mostly mental that led to the Slowlane mentality to be F*cking destroyed, but this is only one side of a endless side coin
Anyway, you have your own unique mindset that you can easily combine with this momentum ideas if you want adapt the to your own life and situations.
Good luck on a Fastlane road trip!