Mastering momentum is a vital way to accomplish as many tasks as possible. It’s how a lot of time management tips are tied together. Now, this can be either a good or bad thing depending on how you choose to use this knowledge. I’m going to illustrate my experience with momentum a couple of week ago.
One Sunday evening, I decided to run 16+ miles. Usually, I make sure to accomplish all of hardest things on my to do list for the day first thing in the morning. On this day, I wanted to experiment and see what would happen with my productivity if I did the opposite.
There was no surprise here. It’s easier for me to knock out any work left for the day after a morning run. Sadly, because I decided to put off my run until late at night it was hard to focus and easier to lounge around. My long run was in the back of my mind that day, and my brain tricked itself into putting off what I had to do until after my workout. Here’s a breakdown of what I noticed when I procrastinate workouts and don’t follow any time management tips:
- Increased irritability
- Prone to hours of surfing the Internet
- Dreading the thought that I had to run
- Considered skipping the workout entirely
- Decreased motivation
I actually felt a lot worse in the beginning of the workout than how I usually do. When it was over everything was back to normal. I was motivated to complete my stretching and core drills, and I found it easier to work on all of the assignments I put off during the day. Funny enough, the thought of going on another run didn’t even seem as bad that night.
Now you understand that inertia works even with time management tips. If you decide to watch a popular television show on Netflix, you’ll find it easy to binge watch the entire series. However, if you set the remote control down and lace up your shoes for a run…you’ll see how easy it is to keep on moving forward and do something productive.
Try out running every day in the morning for a week. Even if you’re not good at it. You’ll see how easy it is to keep the momentum up and take care of business first thing in the morning.
After a hard workout in the morning you might find the following:
- Greater sense of well being
- Feeling of accomplishment
- Refreshed feeling (from sweating out all of those gross toxins)
- Increased motivation to tackle all of your things on your to-do list
J