Building Momentum – Two Minutes at a Time
“Are they Bigger than Us?”
“Yes”
“Are they Stronger than Us?”
“You bet Ya”
“Are they Tougher?”
“I dont know, they’re pretty tough, We’re pretty tough….It’s Close”
“But….Will they work harder than us”?
“That’s up to you, and that’s what matters”
“We’ve go sixty minutes, that’s it. A lot is going to happen, momentum can swing at a blink of an eye. Wherever we are, at any moment we’re a goal and a face-off away from changing everything“
“Focus on two minutes at a time, we need to Win more two-minute intervals than the other guys, Ok. We need to prolong the good and and shut down the bad. We need to OWN that next two-minutes!”
“The First and the Last two minutes of each quarter are critical, we’re gonna set the tone, and finish strong . And if we do that Men, They’ll be a locker room dance-off in about three hours time”
“And remember…… Hustle is Contagious…..Who’s gonna make the First Play?”
Pre-game speeches, boy do I miss ‘Em. There’s really nothing that compares to that feeling, a locker room of highly competitive people, who’ve been putting in the work, preparing as a team for months, for this very moment. The 5am practices, the hills, the clanking of Iron in the weight room, the sweat, the tears, all culminating with this exciting, nerve-racking, anxious, determined moment of taking the field. Unknowing of what your opponent has up their sleeves, ready to react at a moments notice and letting the play (mental and physical) decide the outcome, 60 minutes, in-between the lines, it’s Game Time.
Momentum is a funny thing, it’s one of those unmeasurable statistics that decide the outcome of 99% of competitions. Simply put, if you win the momentum battle, you’ll win the game. It has such an interesting dynamic, it’s not something you count, it’s something you feel, and somehow it always finds a way to equilibrium. When someone or something is building it, it’s being taken from somewhere else. This is a relativity simple concept to understand in terms of a game, but how the hell does it apply to everything else in your life?
I bet you can recall the phrase “It’s just not my Day” coming out of your mouth at some-point in the recent past. Whatever could go wrong did go wrong that day – you woke up late, stepped in a puddle running to work, spilt coffee everywhere but the floor…you know what I’m taking about. But on other days it’s the exact opposite, you wake up refreshed, have a lovely stroll to work, where a note of appreciation and a raise await (OK, definitely seems like a lot less of these, right?). It’s all a momentum game, it’s why we usually classify our days in a binary fashion, Good or Bad. At the end of the day, your emotional scale is tilted in one of those two directions. When we step back and take a 10,000 ft view, the more tilts you have in the “Good” direction helps define your week, month, year and ummm Life. So momentum is pretty powerful, the question is – How can you harness this almighty power and use it to your advantage?
Momentum Mondays
Well, I’m not sure there are any secret formulas to tame this beast(the not so secret one is p=mv), but there are certainly things you can do that’ll help you gain it in a positive fashion. Think of each month as a 60 minute game, broken down into four 15 minute quarters. Every Monday is the start of a new quarter, and in-case you were wondering there’s 12 games in this season(you can do the math). It’s Monday morning, time to go out an compete (aka get out of bed and go to work), this is the first two minutes of the quarter, a crucial time in any game. It’s time to set the tone, show the other guys(or gals) that you mean business, that your prepared, and have no intention of rolling over. If you despise Monday mornings, it means your losing the first two minutes of the action, and more importantly, momentum for your week. Get up early and do something for you, something that will put you in a positive mindset (extra sleep doesn’t count), this is the opening play of the game, set the tone with something you like to do, exercise, reading, yoga, whatever it may be. You always have the choice of what lenses you see your day through, framing is a key component of ensuring your momentum continues to track in the black. Know this, you can’t control 99.99999999999 % of things that happen in this world, but you do have ultimate control of how you deal with situations, especially negative ones.
Once the Momentum scale is tilted in the positive, it’s time to build on it throughout the rest of the week. Here are some tips that work for me, to stay focused and locked in:
Routine – With consistency comes Success – Wake up Early, Exercise, Eat a Nutritious Breakfast, Let the People you Love know It… EVERYDAY
Discipline – Some Days(or many) you’ll want to cut corners and skip part of your routine (sleep late, eat junk, not exercise). DON’T! Show up and DO IT, Especially when your not feeling it. Sometimes life will get in the way and that’s fine, but every other day “Get it Done”
Be Bold – Constantly educate yourself about ways to improve your life, and try new things. Fit them in around your core routine to give them a test-run
Adjust – When new ideas are proven to be beneficial, adjust your routine to incorporate these enhancements
You often hear “It’s not how you start, It’s how you finish”, that saying has stuck around for good reason. As one US President may put it , the last two minutes are “HUGEEEE”. You’ve made it through the week and it’s time to close out the quarter strong. These last two minutes essentially translates to your Sunday. After an eventful weekend, saying Sunday night is “rough” may be an understatement. Your tired, you most likely deviated from your routine, and the dread of Monday looms. Nothing’s worse than laying in bed, 10pm Sunday night, trying to get a good night sleep after staying up till 2am the past two nights, it doesn’t work, I know from many, many attempts. These metaphoric last two minutes set-up your week ahead, stay the course, know by doing this your just gaining momentum for the start of the next quarter. You wanna play the last two minutes just like the first two, Up early, physical activity and a good breakfast…..in other words Routine.
Momentum has the power to lift you up like a SpaceX rocket in route to Mars or drag you down like Tesla’s stock with each Model 3 delay. The Good news is: once you string together a few good quarters, routine gets easier, results begin to compound and your looking at a pretty good outcome for the game. As the wins mount, your seasons outlook is bright. All those small victories -two minutes at a time – set you up for Macro success . The Key is – momentum doesn’t just start, it needs to be created, it needs to build. It will gain mass from all those two-minute micro victories, the daily hard work, with this you’ll see the speed at which achievements materialize accelerate. And Remember…
Hustle is Contagious, and YOU need to make the first play…
