Monday Motivation: Let Inertia Carry You

Spring break’s over, classes are back with a vengeance, and it’s time for me to feel the withdrawal symptoms of breaking my vampire sleep schedule. My alarms are set and my google calendar looks like a colorful prison of time blocks from 7 am to midnight. But despite my senioritis, I'm a little pumped to dive into the mania of balancing school, work, friends, leadership, personal time, and sleep. And for that, I’m giving the credit to Isaac Newton. 

Lately I’ve been thinking about the law of inertia and how it applies to me in the here and now. Sounds nerdy, and it probably is, but my intuition tells me that inertia plays a quietly huge role in how we perform in work, in school, and probably everywhere else. When you’re able to build a schedule that is aligned with your priorities, tendencies, and energy levels, I think that’s where you’ll find yourself in a daily flow. The momentum of each little win will carry you forward...if you let it. 

Translation: I can’t decide to go play pool when my schedule says study for an exam just because I feel like it in the moment. Instead, I schedule fat breaks in my evenings that allow me to chill and be a little less anti-social. Trust your system, trust your goals, and trust that if there's a pure intent behind your desires, if you pour your heart into your work, you will always be satisfied, both with yourself and with the outcome. And trust that an object in motion will stay in motion, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. 

So my goal for the last 9 weeks of my college career is to swerve as many of those forces as possible. That’s easier said than done though. I was supposed to get out of bed today at 8:45, but I didn’t rise until after 10 am. I’m trying to build new habits (e.g. daily workouts, daily writing) and I’m starting to see the key is in the system you build for yourself. I’ve been trying to force myself to wake up as early as 7 am on some days to work out, when God knows I barely exist that early in the morning. So when the system doesn’t work as it should, you tweak it till it sings. 

Your schedule should push you to be a better version of yourself each day, but it should also respect your personality and lifestyle. As you grow, you should probably be inserting slight, new adjustments, but trying to overhaul your life all at once will probably be inefficient and ineffective.  

Take the road blocks out the way beforehand. Design the life you want to live and go live in it, but be honest about how well that life suits you. Start small and be consistent with those small victories until the grind feels as natural as breathing. Bumps and roadblocks will pop up, but as long as you have that “go” mindset, as long as you keep moving, inertia will carry you.