How to Gain Momentum in Life
Many of us struggle to gain and maintain momentum in life, in business, in our careers, and our dreams. We push ourselves forward to try new things and we get demoralized when they don’t work out. When we look at the world we get frustrated when we see others having breakthroughs, successes, and celebrations.
Think of General Motors determined to keep their existing business model in place. One day they’re having a meeting and they look outside the window as a Tesla drives by. They exclaim, “what the hell is that?!”.
‘That’ appears to be a silver bullet. A bet somebody made and got ‘lucky’ on. If only we had more of and could create more of this ‘luck’. When in reality that’s a cumulative effort of lots of lead bullets. To quote a story from Ben Horowitz of Andreessen-Horowitz, Bill Turpin explains:
“There is no silver bullet that’s going to fix that. No, we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.”
It’s how Nike became a super brand, how Tesla started and was able to sell out of flamethrowers (a completely unrelated product to their core offering), how the New England Patriots are so dominant, and practically everything else we’ve studied.
At the end of the day it was the focus on a single greater objective and motion that all this ammunition and smaller actions supported over time. So why is this so hard to see? We see things through a highlight reel, a vacuum. Our culture is built around it, social media supports it, and few of us take the time to take a closer look at how things are made.
This is, in part, why we created Absolute Zero. Absolute Zero is the coldest temperature, the state at which everything stops so you can analyze everything down to a molecular level.
The Flywheel Effect
This is a concept taken directly from Jim Collins. Jim talks about this massive 5,000 lb. wheel mounted horizontally. Imagine you have to push this wheel to get what you desire. That could be a relationship goal, a business goal, a personal or career goal.
You must turn this wheel once to gain a certain level in that relationship or business profitability. At first this wheel is incredibly hard to push. Your body shakes and trembles as you try to get your first complete rotation (level) with this wheel. It’s the hardest level to complete, shouldn’t the first level be the easiest level? Unfortunately that’s not the case.
But you don’t care because you’re determined. You keep pushing and you gradually get 1…2…4….8 rotations because you’re slowly gaining momentum from pushing this massive wheel. At some point after pushing this damn wheel you reach a breakthrough! The wheel seems like it’s almost starting to turn by itself, the weight is turning in your favor towards what you set out for.
Now picture yourself drenched in sweat, exhausted from all your hard work and somebody walks by and notices this breakthrough you’ve achieved. They get excited (for their own benefit) and exclaim, “Wow! How did you do it? What was the one thing that led to your success?!”. It’s nonsense, did they even think before they asked this question?
What push led to the major breakthrough? No single push but a cumulative effort of all this pain and sweat. No single heave, push, or pull resulted in this major breakthrough. No matter how hard or easy that push was you kept pushing. Otherwise all your progress would’ve been lost like you were playing a game you couldn’t save and you shut off your console.
From the outside all of the achievements looks like dramatic, hyped up events that just landed on somebody. In Jim’s words here’s what is actually happening:
“Here’s what’s important. We’ve allowed the way transitions look from the outside to drive our perception of what they must feel like to those going through them on the inside. From the outside, they look like dramatic, almost revolutionary breakthroughs. But from the inside, they feel completely different, more like an organic development process.”
Comparison Companies
Jim Collins had a chance to study a pattern of comparison companies that didn’t necessarily go from good to great. Instead of deliberately executing and figuring out what needed to be done, the focus was around ‘motivating the troops’ and hype.
They frequently created and launched new programs hoping that one would be the silver bullet, the one effort that led them to massive success. They sought the one killer product, the viral marketing campaign, or the defining moment that would conveniently allow them to skip the hard work of ramping up before a major breakthrough.
They pushed the flywheel in one direction for a little while, got tired of pushing that wheel and switched directions continuously. After years of churn, inconsistent effort, and aimless pushing they had fully committed to the doom loop. They were now wired to try and move a bunch of different directions effectively getting them nowhere.
When you’re looking for momentum you also have to be looking for what might be interrupting your progress. What is the silver bullet you’re encountering or looking for? The fight for momentum and what you desire is much easier when your expectations and beliefs are a 1:1 reflection of what it actually takes to get momentum.
Distractions must not be nipped, but crushed.
