Get Things Going

One of the hardest part of any job is to get things going.  It is easy to plan and procrastinate and not get anything done.  I have put off starting this web site for over a year now.

Planning is important, but you also want to make sure action is taking place in terms of doing things.  You want to make sure you can build momentum. 

Momentum derives from Newton’s first law of motion: “… an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force.”  Are you the force that moves the object?  When you start taking steps to achieve your goals or making your life better, then you are acting on the object of interest (i.e., your life, project, weight loss, etc.).

Anyone can hammer a nail.  The faster the hammer is moving when it hits the nail, the further the nail will be driven into the wood.  Even small slow blows with a hammer will drive the largest of nails providing the hammer is big enough.  Every small blow from the hammer to the nail drives the nail just a little further into the wood.  I have seen kids drive big nails into wood by just hammering the nail with a lot of little blows.   The kids will just lift the hammer and let it fall onto the head of the nail.  Sometimes the nail only moves a fraction of a millimeter for each blow of the hammer, but, with enough hits of the hammer, the nail is driven.

When I was a kid, we were visiting my grandmother’s farm where my dad was raised.  I was with my dad on the farm while he was repairing a chicken coop.  He was nailing new siding to the exterior walls.  I was so impressed when he showed me he could drive a nail all the way through the siding and the wood with one blow.  Now my dad had grown up on that farm and had done many repair projects through the years, so he was very coordinated with that hammer as he had driven thousands of nails on that farm.  Over the years, my dad had gained the skill needed to drive nails with a single hit.

Many of will never be able to drive nails with one blow; however, as we do more and more of what we set out to do, we will become more efficient at what we do.  Therefore, hammering the same nail the next time will go more quickly.  I have done many home improvement projects, and I still cannot hammer a nail with one blow, but I can hammer nails with pretty good efficiency.

If you were to dedicate 15 minutes a day for six days every week, that would be working on a project for an hour and half each week.  Added up over 50 weeks (two weeks off for vacation), you would have spent 75 hours working toward your goal – almost two full time work weeks.

It is the same with our projects and life goals.  Like driving the nail with little taps, our goals and projects can be achieved slowly if needed with a little effort each day. 

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