Let’s dig a little deeper into yesterday’s thoughts.
I outlined why you should first focus on building momentum, before worrying about your direction.
This is actually what you’ve been doing most of your life.
Barring major disabilities, all people learn to walk and talk, eat food and throw balls, just in the first few years of life.
Without any direction. At least without any explicit direction.
The implicit direction they are going is based on imitation. They just want to be like their parents and older siblings who can do those things.
We humans are really good at imitation.
And we continue imitating as we go. We pick up implicit direction from those around us when we try to be like them: to be as cool as they are, or as accomplished, or as wealthy, or as talented.
As we go we build momentum.
Unless we stop.
And we all stop, or think about stopping, eventually.
When I was in high school, I took a weight lifting class. I was pretty weak, and I thought that class would help me get stronger. And it probably did, a little bit, for one semester. But then I stopped lifting. I don’t remember the exact thinking I had at the time, but I’m sure it was a combination of “I’m a runner, not a lifter” and “I’m not very good at lifting” and “I don’t really know how to go beyond what they taught in class.”
So I justified that being strong wasn’t that important, and whatever momentum a semester of lifting had built up was wiped out within a week.
For a host of reasons, I didn’t value being strong at that point in my life, and so that momentum was gone.
The real problem was that I wouldn’t come to understand the value of being strong until much later in my life.
Meanwhile, I was building a lot of momentum in the area of programming and computers. Even as a freshman in high school I had work as a coder, and that continued through all of high school and college. I stuck with it, and the momentum carried me on to an internship at Microsoft, a full time job there a year later, then to New York and Fog Creek 5 years after that, and now to a pretty sweet remote work gig with Articulate.
Looking back, it was the momentum that let me think about and choose a direction. And rework that direction a couple times.
But really, my direction at the beginning was largely handed to me. I didn’t think it through deeply. I was too busy building momentum. So I did the obvious thing for computer science students at my college: I applied for a Microsoft internship.
I was following someone else’s script.
It wasn’t a bad one. But it wasn’t mine.
Not at first.
But as I built momentum two things happened. Possibilities opened up. And the most rewarding, interesting, and fulfilling ones became clearer.
Sure, when my momentum was still pretty low, I had some big dreams and ambitions. But, looking back, they weren’t realistic.
Even now, I have dreams and visions that aren’t realistic, not given where I’m at and my current momentum. I’m slowly getting better at ignoring the siren song of goals or dreams that don’t make sense for me.
Because they don’t make sense for me yet. If I can build my momentum, those possibilities will open up.
One that has opened up in the past few years is that I could get stronger by lifting. That possibility required that I learn a lot about myself over the years, some hard lessons. But when I was ready to start again, the key was to just build momentum. Rather than spending a ton of time researching programs to pick a direction, I just needed to metaphorically close my eyes and pick one at random. Then do it for a while. With the momentum in place, a daily habit of exercising, then it became much easier to learn and adjust over time. And I have, changing programs in response to stalling out, injuries, and weight loss goals.
But wait, what does all this have to do with daily planning?
Well, some types of momentum are foundational. They will affect every area of your life. Getting stronger physically is one of those areas. Learning new skills is another. Building strong relationships is a third.
Ordering your mind and life is one of these foundational types of momentum.
For me, it came before the others in a lot of ways. I needed the structure that daily planning gives me in order to really work on physical strength and to keep learning new skills while raising a family and working a full time job.
Build some momentum with daily planning.
You’ll be surprised at the opportunities that it will open up.