How To Overcome Inertia

How To Overcome Inertia
By Arthur Cooper
(c) Copyright 2004

Do you find it difficult to get things moving at work when faced with a seemingly impossible assignment?

Are you frustrated by other people’s lack of ‘Get Up And Go’?
Are they overcome by the enormity of the job to be done. Do they give up before they have even started?

Or worse, can you apply these comments to yourself?
Do you find sometimes that your own ‘Get Up And Go’ has already got up and gone?

Don’t despair. There are simple steps you can take to get things moving again.

It is like trying to move a loaded super tanker. At first it looks as though that you could never have enough power to move it. It takes time before any movement can be detected. But little by little it starts to move forwards until eventually it is hard to stop.

If you follow these steps you can tackle almost anything.

1.Renew the vision. Fix your goals.

Focus again on what you are aiming for. Visualise the end result. Fix in your mind and the minds of all the others involved the final purpose of what you are doing and the beneficial results that will flow from achieving it. Get enthused about where you want to be. Fix the intermediate waypoints, the aims and the goals.

2. Divide up the overall job into smaller manageable segments. Think of it as a series of little steps instead of one great leap. The entire project may be look daunting, so chop it up into shorter, easier, less intimidating tasks. Make each individual task sufficiently small to be acknowledged by everyone as possible. Eliminate the doubts and the doubters.

3. Make a start. Get some competed tasks in the bag. Start by completing some very small and easy tasks to create an early sense of achievement. Celebrate and record these achievements. Establish an early sense of progress being made.

3. Make sure that each task has a clear finishing point so that it is obvious when has been done. Record all of them as soon as they are completed and add them to the growing list of achievements. Seeing the list of tasks completed growing steadily and the list of tasks still to be done shrinking steadily gives a real boost to confidence and a renewed shot of enthusiasm.

4. Carry on clocking up jobs done. Before you realise it you will be well on the way to overall completion. Just as the super tanker moves imperceptibly, but speeds up little by little, so with your mammoth project. Slowly but surely you will build up a momentum that is cannot be stopped. Each little task builds up a bit more speed. Each job done is a slight movement in the right direction.

One word of warning, though. Just as it is difficult to change direction in a super tanker once it is up to speed, so it is with a large project. If you set off in the wrong direction it is very difficult to get back onto track once you are at full steam. So make sure your vision is the right one and make sure that your aims and goals along the way are all correct before you set sail.