The Flywheel

Sometimes you have to focus on your work, and your health suffers.

Sometimes you have to focus on studying, and your good eating suffers.

Sometimes you have to focus on a newborn, and your sleep suffers.

Sometimes you have to focus on your relationship, and your ego suffers.

This short-term hyper-focus takes your attention off of other things in your life, and on the flip side, this focus makes everything else you do possible.

This focus can build momentum, and sometimes with momentum, things move on their own after you get them started.

It’s called the flywheel.

Imagine it as any choice you make as a push on a huge wheel that is hard to move. You’re either moving it forward, to a better future, or backwards, towards a difficult past.

You make good choices, day after day, week after week, year after year, and one day, that huge wheel starts to move.

You see a bit of progress, whatever that progress might be. You lose a few pounds. You get a win at work. Your baby sleeps through the night.

Then it moves a bit more, then a bit more, and finally, it gets some momentum.

Once you have a bit of momentum behind you, it’s easier to make those good choices. The flywheel is moving. You can move forward much faster with a little extra effort, and the wheel keeps moving forward for a bit on it’s own.

You reach a milestone. You get a promotion. You get a compliment. You’re happier. The wheel moves a little faster.

This is all well and good, but just know that when you hyper-focus, you neglect other things. That time and effort you had to spend initially meant you were sacrificing something else. Relationship. Money. Time. Whatever it was, it was hard. And this will continue to be hard.

Once you’ve accepted that, what you have to realize is you were neglecting some parts of your life anyways. So if you are more intentional on how you spend your time, you can think about how your focus, your choices, are influencing your future.

The results will be either positive, or negative.

The choice between a double fudge sundae, and salad.

The choice to watch the next eye-catching video and going for a walk.

The choice to work on yourself, or complain about the situation you find yourself in.

All of those things are tough, and you find yourself out of balance. You know what you should do, but you’re not necessarily doing it.

So where you spend your time, your energy, your focus, will either help you or hurt you down the road.

So make the good choice.

Push the flywheel in the direction you want and before you know it, the momentum will take you far beyond your wildest dreams.