Today I was driving to a meeting and for some inexplicable reason I started thinking about inertia.
Inertia is, of course, the tendency for an object in motion to stay in motion (or at rest) barring any external force. And I think all of us tend to have inertia in our lives. We do the same things (or don’t do things) not necessarily because they’re the “right” things or the “best” things, but rather because they’re the things we’ve been doing for so long that it’s just easier to keep doing them than to change and do something different.
Since my business is a big part of my everyday life, I tend to think about ways to improve it or expand it or just generally be more successful. And I wonder if I have too much inertia in the way I do business. I’ve been doing it more or less the same way for almost nine years now, and although I’m happy with my progress and proud of where I am, at the same time I can’t help but wonder if changing this or that would take me in new directions that would be even more rewarding.
The hard thing about inertia is overcoming it. I guess one of my New Year’s resolutions should be to do just that. And not just in business, but in my life in general. How many of my daily activities are nothing more than inertia? How many more great things might I be able to do if I overcome that inertia and move in a different direction?