Building Momentum

Because progress is never all or nothing.

I have been thinking a lot about momentum recently.

I used to think progress had to be all or nothing. If I couldn’t do a great workout, I wouldn’t go to the gym. If I didn’t have enough time to read a whole chapter, I wouldn’t open a book. If I felt too drained to call a friend, I wouldn’t pick up the phone.

One of my big pillars since starting Jab’s Lab has been starting small, and yet I found it hard to apply that to my personal life.

I have many goals, but there often seems to be a wide gap between starting anything and how the small actions will get me to the goals. I want to do good work, I want to live healthily, and I want to be a good friend, family member, and partner.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about 1% improvement every day, and the power of consistent, compounding progress. By taking small actions each day, over time, you can shape the course of your future.

In short, making small units of progress is better than doing nothing. And while it’s easy (at least for me) to feel overwhelmed about what comes next and where my decisions are leading, I have mitigated this by asking myself “Will this action build the kind of momentum I want?”

One of my goals is to feel better and more active physically, so I started running again last week. The first day was tough. But as I ran a few days in a row, I built some momentum. The next time I laced up the shoes, it was a little bit easier. And the next time, it was even easier.

Everything you do builds some momentum, whether positive or negative. Over time, you become the sum of these small, consistent actions. You may call it your habits or routines, but regardless, it’s the little actions over time that make up who you are.

Consistently making small units of progress adds up over time. Run one mile. Read one page. Write one gratitude. Every subsequent day of action, I’ve realized that the mile feels shorter, the page is easier, and the gratitude comes more naturally.

I used to discount these small actions, and underestimate their impact.

But as I sit here looking at the 15 articles I’ve published so far on Jab’s Lab, it’s hard to understate the importance of momentum. The first article was hard, but easy with a spur of motivation. The second article I had been planning for a few weeks. By the fifth article, I was already talking about how hard it was to bring posts across the finish line. But even though it was hard, it was important for me to keep showing up.

By now, writing has become my Tuesday evening ritual, and I have some momentum on my side. At this point, while it may seem easy to skip a week, the momentum I’ve built by writing every week keeps me coming back. And every article I post, I identify more and more as a writer.

Maybe someday, I’ll have an article locked and loaded on a Monday night, scheduled to post the next morning. But until then, I’ll keep riding this momentum and finding ways to live out my values.

Until next Tuesday,
Cory