Inertia: It’s Not That Easy to Change
How a simple concept in science can explain the reluctance of change; and help you hold a new paradigm of change.
Picture this: one evening, you are in a car, driving at 110 km/h. The sky is picturesquely orange and everything is fine. Until suddenly, a cat that was licking its paw beside the road decided to troll you and cross the road abruptly. Having a ninja-grade reaction, you immediately push the brake as deep as possible.
What happens next? Do you imagine yourself pushed forward even if the car has stopped?
If yes, you just described inertia at work. If not, take my word for it, you should feel thrust towards the steering wheel, and at that speed, it indeed will hurt. Vice versa, to the other way if you are previously motionless and inadvertently step down the accelerator.
Hello physics our old friend
I like the simple yet succinct definition of inertia by Cambridge Dictionary:
Inertia is the tendency not to change what is happening
That being said, inertia is a measure of the hardship of overcoming changes. The bigger the inertia is, the harder it will be to get over the change.
Although, in addition, also to be more analogous to the car imagination, I tend to think of inertia as:
We’ll call this Equation 1, okay? That is, the ratio of how drastic the change is and the capability of keeping up with the change.
It then kind of can be said that inertia is proportional to the magnitude of change, and inversely proportional to the ability of the keeping up. The larger the gap between the initial and the final condition is, the harder it will be to overcome the change. Likewise, the poorer the keeping up process is, the harder it will be to overcome the change.
So, what happens is, even when the car has stopped, your body still has the tendency not to change the moving. Your body can’t keep up fast enough with the sudden change of 110 km/h to 0 km/h immediately, so you still feel the remnant of the motion with the previous speed. Therefore, if your speed is just 20 km/h, or if you decelerate gradually, you will, at most, just experience a mild push from behind; instead of feeling as if you are thrown harshly.
I shall mention here that in the case of mechanical inertia, the determining factor of how well something can adapt to the change in speed is, mass; in inverse-proportion. Specific to this scenario, the heavier you are, the harder it will be for you to stop being pushed forward.
You also have to know that inertia concept is ubiquitous, not only in mechanical system. It is also a concept in electromagnetism, mass transport and fluid flow.
Hold this thought for a while, bear with me.
It’s not only hard to stop, but also to start
When you think about it, the concept of inertia is also perfectly applicable, albeit analogically, in other means of change in our lives.
I believe prior to reading this writing, you have suffered death of a loved one, gone through post-breakup horror, and tried stopping a bad habit. Not only ‘bad’ changes, it also feels hard to start going to the gym, to start allocating time for reading, to start learning financial management for your future family, and many other instances.
Now compare, which one would be harder:
- Going from reading zero books a year to five books a month; or to one book a month for three months, two books a month for the next three month, and so on?
- Losing a friend unexpectedly to a lethal accident, or finally lose contact with that old best friend whose life and yours have been parted little by little along the time?
Of course, you’d chose the latter. They are easier, because there are littler increments, stomached individually in a pace bearable enough for someone to keep up with. They are easier, because, having littler changes at a time, they satisfy Equation 1 in a way that produce smaller inertia. Ergo, they are easier to get over.
Radical changes
You might’ve heard of, or even experienced, the hardship of stopping smoking, or alcohol addiction, or any other addiction. And more often than not, people with addiction problem try to go cold turkey; in hope for debunking the myth of radical changes. I’m not saying that it won’t do at all, indeed there have been proofs of splendid people that can cease from their addiction with a single strike.
I shall use smoking addiction as an example to deliver my point.
A 2016 cohort study estimated that the realistic average number of attempts smokers made before they were able to quit smoking for a year is 30. This number was significantly higher than what had been advertised by several health organisations. CDC had estimated 8–11 attempts, American Cancer Society had thought 8–10, and Australian Cancer Council had said people needed 12–14 attempts. However, it has to be underlined that this study only considered an attempt to be successful if it was “one that lasted for at least 1 year, as assessed by self-reported time since last cigarette.”
Even worse, it is suggested that with each failed cold turkey attempts, the future odds of going completely abstinent in one go are decreasing. Or as the author stated, “past behaviour predicts future behaviour.”
To further accentuate my point, I should cite the conclusion from a review from UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, University of Oxford.
It had been doubted whether smoking reduction would lead to complete cessation, or instead decreasing the chance of it. Nonetheless, several evidence showed that reduced smoking frequency, aided with ‘clean’ nicotine (nicotine patches, chewing gum, e-cigarettes, etc.) could increase the likelihood of leaving smoking altogether. Weak as it may, the review did further contrast the promises of abrupt and gradual cessation.
In contrast, to be fair and not cherry-picky, there is also a study by researchers from UCSD, stating that people who stop smoking abruptly succeed better than their gradually-stopping counterparts, monitored from 4 weeks to 6 months period. However, it has to be mentioned that the participants were allowed to use clean nicotine liberally whenever they had the craving. So, despite not being able to give in to their addiction, they emulated the fulfilment of it, to help dampening the impact of the wide difference between their addiction to their abstinence.
The author, Dr. Lindson-Hawley et al., later posited two possible causes relating to the failure of gradual cessation. One of which is that gradual cessation required supporting structure (such as quit date, and reduction goals) to maximise success. The other one is that the participants who opted gradual cessation might lack motivation in the first place. Both reasons indeed in one sense, implied the lack of ability to keep up with the pressure of change
Compound Interest
So, should you be worried whether you can reach your goal if you can just bear small pressure at a time?
Apocryphally, it has been known for more than half century that Albert Einstein once said that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. Some even credited him to have said that it was the 8ᵗʰ wonder of the world. Doubtful as it is, the notion does have some truth in it.
You must’ve heard the phrase ‘compound interest’ somewhere else, presumably in that Economic 101 classes. But in case you’ve forgotten, the gist of this concept is the subjection of a number that has previously subjected to interest. In other words, interest on interest.
With the same spirit, James Clear, in his New-York-Times-Bestseller Book, Atomic Habits, thinks of habit creation (and also breaking, for that matter) as compound interest of self-development. That being so, what matter the most is not always how much better you are from yesterday, but instead, the continuous improvement despite with small changes every day.
This book is also one of those book that popularised the juxtaposition of 1% improvement and 1% regression per day via equation and graph:
Temporal landmarks
In addition to know how much to change, another way to improve the success of overcoming inertia is to know when to change.
In his superb book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Daniel H. Pink surfaces the idea of temporal landmarks.
We usually use landmarks spatially to mark places and also navigate our ways. Just like you say that to get to your house, your friends have to turn left from the petrol station; just like the abrupt presence of the cat on your way tells you to change your speed.
Some times — or more concretely, dates — can serve just like the petrol station and the cat; i.e. to tell you when to change the course of your life.
Further, Pink elaborates the results a work by researchers from University of Pennsylvania to resound his points.
They discovered that the search volume of the keyword “diet” increased dramatically on January 1 to about 180% its usual number. Other dates did too, despite its comparably insignificance: the days after federal holidays did 110%, starts of weeks did 114%.
The effect was also observed on student gym attendance. Starts of semesters increase attendance by 47%, starts of year 12%, starts of month 14%, starts of week 33%, birthdays 8%.
The authors, Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman, and Jason Riis then coined the term “fresh start effect” for this phenomenon.
They went another mile as to conjecture that temporal landmarks have two purposes.
First, temporal landmarks cue people to open “new mental accounts” as in businesses close their fiscal books annually. This mental state, they proposed, disconnects the present self from the past self; leading to confidence and motivation to pursue aspirations.
The second one is that temporal landmarks, to quote the authors verbatim, “ interrupt attention to day-to-day minutiae, causing people to take a big-picture view of their lives and thus focus more on achieving their goals.” Just like when your friends search for your house, they will think more slowly and deliberately, and consider all buildings and premises around them that would never have been brought into attention on other occasions.
The latter particularly reminds Pink and me of the works of the “slow thinking” mode of our brains explained by Daniel Kahneman in his inspired book, Thinking Fast and Slow: thinking of and making decisions slowly, allowing more logic, deliberation and sense to come into the mix.
Choose your priority
Seeing the graph above, it is clear that if just 1% change a day make that big a difference in a year, bigger change a day must give even more significance.
Absolutely.
But, let’s revisit Equation 1. Bigger changes have to be balanced by exerting more force to keep up in order to reduce the inertia, which will feel more difficult. And while it’s not discourage to try harder, in fact, it is encouraged, you also have to be aware to make sure that your trying harder doesn’t undermine your whole effort — the way that the smokers repeatedly fell back after going cold turkey. Nor that you should prefer trying the easiest path, if you want to maximise your success.
As cliché as it may be, the oft-cited children story of Goldilocks, the little girl who chooses to eat a bowl of porridge that is not too hot nor too cold is still relevant to guide adults to live their lives; to choose just the right temperature to eat and finish the whole bowl comfortably.
That all being said, I don’t persuade you to take one path over the other. The question is, instead, the priority; whether it is the easiness, or the length and time. Moreover, it’s all relative. One may keep up with the change better than others and thus take a steeper path over the more level one; while others can’t bear too much pressure and choose instead to dwell longer in their own Goldilocks Zone.
All in all, the easiest path isn’t the same as the shortest path. After all, the winding roads around mountains are made to make it easier, not faster, to climb to the peak. It is easier to exert less power over a longer period of time. That’s the whole point of overcoming big inertia: to break it down to simpler, smaller pieces.
I shall close this piece with a quote from a book on psychological manipulation, Propaganda by Edward Bernays.
“The great enemy of any attempt to change men’s habits is inertia. Civilisation is limited by inertia.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
