How To Get Only The Most Important Things Done This Year

Build momentum. Break it. Repeat.

There are a lot of things you can do and things you can become. In fact, you can become and do anything — but not everything. You’ve got to choose.

And build momentum around your choice.

As some of you know, I am a big believer in momentum. It’s your best friend if you want to get anything done and it certainly helps me get stuff done.

But recently (in fact, during these holidays), I’ve learned that although momentum is a great tool to get most things done, sometimes you’ve got to break it.

Sometimes, you’ve got to start all over again. This piece will explain why.

What Momentum Is

Imagine that for some reason you need to push a plane down the road. It’s hard. It’s heavy. You try as hard as you can, but it doesn’t budge. Then you ask 40 body-builders to help you out. You push the plane together. It slowly starts to move.

You push harder. The plane moves a bit more. You push even harder. It moves another bit. Pretty soon, you’ll have it going.

Now try to stop the plane from moving. You yell at your body-builder friends to run around the plane and try to stop the plane from moving. Now that’s hard. Why? The plane is heavy, and it has gained momentum. It’s going to take a while before you can get it to stop.

If you write, the best way to write is to write daily, no matter how poorly. Momentum will take care of you and the quality of your work, eventually.

If you are getting ready for a GRE exam, the best way to prepare is to solve exam questions on a regular basis and have weekly mocks.

You can achieve anything you want, if you’re willing to do it regularly, for a long time. Discipline and momentum that comes with it — are the two most important secrets of success in just about anything.

But there is a catch.

You Are Running Blind

Once you’ve started doing something, it’s hard to stop. That’s what momentum is, and that’s the beauty of it. It’s automatic, you don’t think — you just do.

The whole purpose of starting anything is to finish, and momentum will help us get back to work tomorrow. It’s easier to keep doing something if you’ve done it for a while. Much easier than to start all over again, at least.

But the problem with momentum, as I found out, is that you’re essentially running blind. When you first pick a task, an activity, a routine you want to do — you had a choice.

Once you’ve started doing it and started to build momentum, you’re no longer in a position to choose. And then, you’re like that plane that you and your buddies pushed — hard to stop.

When you’re doing something regularly, your zoom is at its closest. You’re blind to the strategic aspects of your routine, the larger zoom.

You’re not thinking about it, you’re just doing it.

The ‘Yellowstone Park’ Case

When you’re riding the wave of momentum, there is a chance that you become like the scientists at Yellowstone Park in the U.S.

For a long time, the scientists and officials were looking for a volcano in that park. They knew there had to be one, somewhere. They just didn’t know where it was.

At some point, one of the scientists said, ‘What a minute…’ and looked at the Yellowstone map once more. It turned out, that the whole region of the park (8,991 km²) is one big volcano. A supervolcano, they called it. An active one too.

When you’re blogging, getting ready for an exam or building a business, you’ve gained so much momentum, that all you can see is details. Your zoom is too close to evaluate whether what you’re doing is right (or, in fact, necessary at all).

You can’t stop and look from a bird’s view, and you can’t see that there is no volcano inside; everything is a volcano.

Maybe the question is not how to build more momentum. Maybe the question is not how to become better at what you’re already doing.

Maybe, just maybe, the real question is — whether you should be doing what you’re doing in the first place.

How Shutting Down Helped Me See More

These holidays, I completely disconnected from work, writing, and the outside world. I had some articles waiting in a queue to be published, but otherwise — I didn’t do anything. I was a complete slob.

At first, it felt bad. I wanted to be more productive, I wanted to keep going, and I was like that plane, pushed by 12 months of relentless activity. However, after a couple of days, the momentum started to subside, and I started to be calmer.

The anxiety went away. I could breathe. I could have fun. And I could finally enjoy my friends and family, and not think about anything else.

At some point, I started thinking about what I’ve done in 2019 — and reassessing the different projects, routines, and tasks that I had. And I realized something important.

I didn’t need half of them.

I could just say ‘no’ to 50% of the things I was doing on a daily basis, and nothing would change. For example, during the last 3 months of 2019, I was blogging on 3 different platforms — Medium and two Russian blogs. But when I asked myself, ‘Why am I doing this?’ — I couldn’t get a clear answer.

I was blogging simply because.

I had momentum. I had a daily routine that fit me and made me comfortable. And I was much more comfortable to keep on going, than stopping abruptly and reassessing, asking myself, ‘Do I really need this?’

I made an audit of everything I did, (and most importantly, everything that worked) and realized that I can easily cut down half of my activities to focus on what really matters. I could restart my momentum in 2020 to not continue doing useless projects.

Momentum Matters (But Recalibrating It Matters Too)

Again, I am a huge believer in momentum. I think that it’s the most underestimated thing about success, and very few people talk about it. It helps me a lot, especially in writing. Woody Allen said, ‘90% of success is showing up’, and it was about momentum.

Momentum is about showing up regularly and doing your job. If you’re a blogger, it’s writing. If you’re a musician, it’s creating music. Muse favors the artist who has the discipline to show up.

However, very often — we can get in our own way. We may be riding the wave of momentum, and it feels to good to stop and ask ourselves the important questions:

• Do I really need this?
• Is this really working, or do I simply want it to work?
• What is working? What is not working?
• What 20% of activities bring 80% of results? Can I get rid of the other 80% that bring only 20%?
• How can I learn from this (failure/success) and how can I get better in the future?

And holidays, weekends — times when you’re allowed to shut down and think with a larger zoom — are perfect to ask these questions and recalibrate your momentum for the future.

Build momentum. Then break it. And start all over again. Wish you luck in 2020!

Thank you for reading this.