“The only thing that creates momentum is movement. And there’s nothing more motivating than momentum.”
There are plenty of times when we know exactly what we should be doing.
There’s a deadline. There’s a clear priority. Something is obviously urgent. In those cases, the answer is fairly simple.
Do the thing.
But there’s another kind of situation that I think causes far more wasted time.
You have a bunch of things that need to be done, but you don’t know what you should be doing right now.
Maybe you’re overwhelmed.
Maybe there are too many priorities.
Maybe the big decision depends on information you don’t have yet.
Maybe you’re just having one of those days where everything feels a little scattered and you can’t seem to figure out where to start.
So you think about it.
You look at your list.
You reorganize the list.
You try to determine what the highest-value activity would be.
You think about what you should prioritize.
Then somehow twenty minutes have passed and absolutely nothing has happened.
I’ve done this plenty of times.
And I think there’s a very simple solution.
When you don’t know what to do, do something that needs to be done.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be the most important thing.
It doesn’t need to be the perfect next step.
It just needs to move something forward.
The Problem With Trying to Find the Perfect Next Move
Prioritization is obviously useful.
If one thing is clearly more important than everything else, do that thing.
This isn’t an argument for ignoring priorities and spending your afternoon alphabetizing a filing cabinet while the building burns down.
But sometimes the priority really isn’t clear.
And when that happens, we can spend an incredible amount of energy trying to optimize a decision that probably doesn’t require that much optimization.
Should I answer these emails first?
Should I work on the proposal?
Should I make that phone call?
Should I clean up the spreadsheet?
Should I start researching the new project?
Should I deal with that little administrative thing I’ve been ignoring?
There might be a theoretically perfect answer.
But sometimes the difference between the best option and the fourth-best option is much smaller than the difference between doing something and doing nothing.
That’s where I think movement starts to matter.
Movement Creates Momentum
Think about pushing a stalled car.
The first few inches are awful.
You lean into it. Your feet dig into the ground. For a moment, you’re not even sure whether the thing is moving.
Then the wheels turn.
A little more.
Then a little more.
Eventually you’re walking behind the car instead of trying to force a motionless object to move.
The car didn’t suddenly become lighter.
Its state changed.
It had momentum.
I think our work can behave the same way.
When you’re sitting there trying to figure out what to do, you’re fighting inertia.
But answer one email.
Make one phone call.
Open the document and write the first paragraph.
Send the invoice.
Put the tools away.
Fix the little thing that has been bothering you.
Do one useful thing that obviously needs to be done.
Now you’re no longer trying to start working.
You’re working.
And those are very different states.
Motivation Might Come After Action
We often think motivation is supposed to come first.
We imagine the sequence looking something like this:
Motivation → Action → Progress
Once we feel motivated, we’ll get started.
Once we’re inspired, we’ll write.
Once we feel energetic, we’ll exercise.
Once we feel focused, we’ll tackle the project.
The problem is that motivation is unreliable.
Sometimes it shows up.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
And if motivation is a prerequisite for movement, we can spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for our own brain to give us permission to begin.
I think the sequence often works the other way:
Movement → Momentum → Motivation → More Movement
You do one thing.
Then another.
You start seeing things disappear from the list.
You solve a small problem that has been sitting in the back of your mind.
Something becomes clearer.
You remember something else that needs to happen.
The day starts moving.
And strangely enough, you start feeling more motivated.
The motivation didn’t create the movement.
The movement created the motivation.
Movement Can Create Clarity Too
There’s another benefit that I think gets overlooked.
Sometimes we’re waiting for clarity before we act.
But action can create clarity. In the same way, purpose can sometimes follow commitment.
When you’re sitting still thinking about ten different problems, they all exist in your head at the same time.
They overlap.
They compete for attention.
Everything feels interconnected and slightly messy.
But once you start working on something, your brain has something concrete to engage with.
You answer the email and realize you actually need to call someone.
You make the call and learn something that changes what you should do next.
You start working on the proposal and suddenly understand what information is missing.
You clean up the spreadsheet and notice a problem you hadn’t seen before.
Movement gives you new information.
And new information makes the next decision easier.
You don’t always need clarity before you move.
Sometimes you move until clarity appears.
This Can Obviously Go Too Far
There is a danger here.
You can become incredibly productive at doing things that don’t matter.
Anyone who has suddenly decided to clean their entire office when an unpleasant task is waiting knows exactly how this works.
Movement can become avoidance.
So this isn’t:
Do random things forever and hope everything works out.
Direction still matters.
Priorities still matter.
At some point, you need to make decisions about where you’re going.
But when you’re completely stationary because you can’t decide which direction is perfect, the immediate problem isn’t your direction.
It’s the fact that you’re not moving.
You can steer once you’re moving.
It’s much harder to steer something that’s standing still.
Just Do Something That Needs to Be Done
There are days when the path is obvious.
Take it.
But on the days when it isn’t, I’ve started to think the better question isn’t always:
“What is the absolute best thing I could be doing right now?”
Sometimes the better question is much simpler:
“What needs to be done?”
Pick something.
Do it.
Then do the next thing.
You might discover that the action you started with wasn’t particularly important.
That’s fine.
Its value may have been that it got you moving.
Because once you’re moving, you can build momentum.
Once you have momentum, motivation tends to follow.
And once you have momentum and motivation, figuring out what to do next usually gets a little easier.
“The only thing that creates momentum is movement. And there’s nothing more motivating than momentum.”
So when you know what needs to be done, do it.
And when you don’t know what to do, do something that needs to be done.
