Building Momentum (Be the Flywheel)
Welcome to another wonderful brain dump. Let me say I love my Remarkable e-ink notebook as it has really help put thoughts and thinking down, especially before I immediately hop on the computer. Clarity is power.
So the theme in Q3 for me was this idea of “Momentum” and it was sparked by talking to a lot of friends while I was home catching up. There’s a lot of people in their late 20’s/30’s that are feeling stuck, or just not sure what is next, or how to take steps to get moving.
It’s pretty wild we start doing something and we blink then it’s 5, 8, 10 years later. Not sure what set us upon this path in the first place. The harsh reality check for a lot of people is they haven’t decided on priorities, is it save for a house, have a family, take a trip, learn something, etc. What I also find challenging for people is they don’t put a $ price tag on what these priorities are. Kind of kick the bucket down the road, it’s easier to ignore reality with lofty whimsical dreams then concrete goals that can be worked towards.
Like take a house/condo for example, say you want a 600sq ft condo relatively downtown → that’s about 600K → 25% down → 150K
Now you have $0 savings, $2996 a month NET taxes (45K annual), and $1000 rent. Let’s say after living expenses able to save 20% of NET every month = $599.
$150,000 / $599 = 250.4 Months / 12 = 20.86 years
REALITY CHECK. Ouch it hurts and we are creatures of social media → I want immediate satisfaction. Unfortunately, for 95.5% of us who don’t get inheritance, or are in that celebrity money it’s a marathon not a sprint. Not to mention most people don’t have a lot of financial literacy growing up and are embarrassed to put their hand up for help.
Well the wonderful thing is there is essentially two options:
- If the goal remains the same the question is how to accelerate the income ie. how can MAKE MORE every month so that 20% is bigger and speeds up how long it takes vs. cutting expenses to save more.
- Change the goal → Maybe it’s not important to be downtown? or maybe Mexico vs Hawaii for a trip, etc.
To be honest I write these posts as a way to remind myself of things I want to take forward. So circling back once you have this reality check → How do you build momentum? Where things keep getting better and better, with less and less energy put in. I think it’s essentially not trying to do TOO many changes at once so you can FOCUS enough and long enough on ONE THING to get momentum.
I’ve talked before about the triangle of balance → Health / Wealth / Love well that’s it. For some reason we think we can do everything at once. Take Jan 1 → people are like I am going to get a new job, workout get a 6 pack, and get find the perfect partner. Fast forward to Mar 30th and nothing has changed. Too much change can also be disruptive and when people don’t see results they lose motivation / don’t build the new habit.
Think of it this way if you have 3 points to divide between Health, Wealth, and Love and to build real momentum in one new thing you need at least to focus 1.3. At the same time you need a minimum .65, and can’t run below .80 for extended periods of time. Eventually you can ramp down from the 1.3 as the momentum continues and builds on itself to get the same output (A Flywheel)
For me the last one and half year of remote work has been like 0.7 focus as I took a step back from a leadership role to an individual contributor, but it allowed me to put 1.2 into love (old and new relationships, along with learning a new language — Espanol ) and 1.1 into learning more surf / bouldering skills.
As I wrap up my job in Nov and set out to try to build my own company in Dec I need to reallocate my energy so I can start building momentum (1.4). Hence saying no to learning new things like kiteboarding, etc. Just maintain the current hobbies — surfing, box, boulder (0.85). Same with relationships (0.75) I just plan on maintaining my close relationships, family, and not go out as often socializing with new people.
So that’s it keep Health / Wealth / Love in balance as much as possible, but don’t try to change all three at the same time, and focus enough on one for a duration to really build momentum.
