Inertia. You know the Universal Law that keeps us moving blindly or sitting dumbly. Among its definitions are apathy, torpor, lethargy and even disinterest. Sometimes inertia needs to be overcome in order to get us started – a good push, a kick in the butt, a fire under the…you get the point.
Other times it is movement itself that needs to be overcome. Forward, backward, sideways – makes no difference – it’s blind, it’s misread as advancement, and ultimately it causes damage when it’s clear that no progress has been made. Think of it as churning water….
Seems to me this is the hardest inertia to overcome. You see, it often looks good – racking up the miles; some don’t want to “rock the boat”; and, as a part of the Universal Law is that you need a greater force to stop it, sometimes we’re afraid of the work required to dig in and bring mindless momentum to a screeching halt – knowing that even more work will be required to get it going again.
I leave it to you to provide examples – I have many – way too many….
But here is the thing – what if stopping the seemingly inexorable actually provides the impetus for change?
Listen:
We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things [but] there are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.
~James Carroll
Imagine what those breezes might tell us – if only we stop to listen.
Your thoughts?
I believe that we all get stuck in patterns of behavior – organizations and individuals – conscious and unconscious patterns – and for all sorts of reasons. In all cases, I think it’s really important that we try to see what we’re doing from 50,000 ft above ourselves while we’re doing it. Call it perspective, or objectivity, or mindfulness. While we’re making decisions, as words are coming out of our mouths, as we are typing an email, while we’re suggesting ideas in meetings, we need to be aware of and looking for patterns in our behavior that we can evaluate against our highest personal goals and aspirations. There is a fine line between comfort and complacency that needs to be challenged at all times in order to stay at the top of your game. Just look to any place where you see folks squeezing the last remaining juice out of an obviously dying business model and you’ll find unfortunate patterns of behavior that are not being actively addressed by the players. Change and challenge are obviously way harder than just cashing a paycheck but these days if you don’t push yourself and your organization to innovate, you may just get pushed out of business.
I find that inertia and “horizontal” thought is not only a tempting behavior pattern stemming from lethargy and inaction, but also a pitfall for well motivated people who fail to identify the linear trajectory of their actions. One could argue that the financial crisis (and other bubble-bust cycles) arose from consecutive years of horizontal thought. A possible solution to this “unintentional” inertia stems from an old adage I heard once:
Ask a fish about water and he will reply: “What’s water?” Only once the fish is removed from water can he truly have perspective as to the nature of his environment.
Particularly in a recession it is tempting to sacrifice vacation time to meet deadlines, but without changing environments it can be hard to gain perspective and recognize patterns of inertia.
Nicely said Andrew. I think a lot about cause and effect in all of this as a way to train myself to think more deeply about my everyday actions (and inactions). I also have a mentor who is outside of the company. I give him a high level overview of what I’m up to every few months so he can challenge me when he notices I’m repeating things I’ve done before that did not work out as I may have hoped. Being able to have that kind of frank dialogue with someone else who won’t buy any bull-shit you might happen to be selling about yourself on any given day, is also a good way to bring in fresh perspective. Vacation sounds good too though…
Vacation aside — the notion of a fish not knowing they are in water — is interesting to me — think on it — what is our parallel?