How to Build Momentum

And why every moment is precious

It is simple. When it works it works.

We all know this state and we crave it. When everything is running smoothly, without us having to think about how we do what we do. We are successful. Our projects progress, we know how to handle each conversation, we simply cannot make mistakes and even happen to find the right person for us without looking.

Athletes know it, artists know it.

We are talking about the momentum.

Defined as the duration of a movement or as it is defined in oxford languages: the right time. That is what we want in everything we do: the perfect timing.

How do we create it?

By learning to be in the moment, giving each moment our full attention. It seems we have forgotten how to do this, favored by the omnipresent technologies surrounding us, ready to inform us about everything that happens. Even about things that happen far away from us and do not have an immediate impact on our life in this exact moment, so that it would not have hurt us to catch up with those things in a few hours.

However, being distracted is one thing. Meanwhile, our own internal hectic rush causes us to lose focus. We do not immerse ourselves with all our capacities in the present situation, the project in front of us, the next breath. We rather think ahead or back, as if there were really matters around the clock more pressing than the present moment.

In 2010 the artist Marina Abramovic gave an impressive performance at MoMA in New York City. Titled The Artist is Present, that was simply what she did. She sat there and did nothing but being present, being in the moment with whoever sat across her and looked her silently in the eyes. Several hundred thousand people came to watch her performance and some even cried, that is how intense it was.

Why? All she did, was being in the moment. What is so special about that?

The answer is: everything. We no longer know how to do it. When we even think about sitting in a chair for seven hours, six days a week without any distractions left to focus on someone who sits down across from us, we get nervous. It sounds unproductive, why should we be able to do something like this?

It is the answer to getting a grip on life.

It seems in every moment we try to figure out what went wrong in the past or try to plan the future. We tend to already think about the next thing on our to do list or still obsess about the last. Neither our attention nor our focus is concentrated in the present, they lurch from one thing to the other. We are slaves of our own stressed brains and refuse to step back out of fear of not being able to keep up with the others.

As Ryan Holiday puts it in his book Stillness is the key, whenever we are about to give a speech, our minds rattle about if the people will like us. Something that does affect our performance. In a crisis, we tend to repeat how unfair it is, that this is happening to us, that we are draining ourselves of the energies we need most.

So instead of focusing on what is right in front of us, we leave the moment, the very thing in which progress is initiated, and then wonder, why we do not progress. It is almost like a vicious circle. We work so hard to build momentum, add more and more to our list and try so desperately to build this state, that we do not recognize that momentum stems from the word moment. We can reach a state of constant movement, a flow only if we learn to honor the moment.

So, in the end, creating momentum is about not wearing our mind down by questioning if we can win, if our efforts are going to bring us a promotion, a successful degree, if we can impress our boss with our work. We do not try to figure out future scenarios or stress about circumstances beyond our control. We focus our attention only on what is right in front of us. That is the only time, where we can create momentum.

We will always be overburdened in trying to solve future problems, that have not occurred yet. It is simply impossible. Life consists of moments. The more intense we live them, the stronger the momentum grows.

Related posts:

In science fiction often portrays AI as robots with human-like characteristics, AI can encompass anything from simple applications (SIRI) to self-driving cars to autonomous weapons…. This year…

On a recent Sunday morning, our beloved Reverend Ian Taylor of Concordia Center for Spiritual Living gave one of his last messages before he retires at the end of this year. His message was about…

The sun is not out yet. The skies have turned a pale blue in anticipation, no longer the deep abyss that evokes darkness. There is so much promise in a sunless sky. I am catching up on my reading…