The two purest essence of getting things done are
Knowing what you want to get done
Getting down to doing it
Two weeks ago, it was Golden Week. Japan was giving bank holidays from Monday to Wednesday, so if you take Thursday and Friday off, you’d get a break for one full week. Since Tokyo was having a State of Emergency, I decided to deep clean my apartment, and went into a digital detox.
I cleaned the dust off the shelves and scrubbed the bathroom clean. I folded each piece of my clothes neatly. The apartment feels like a hotel now. I just want to lay down somewhere and not move.
I did not open any company messages. I did not touch the laptop so I didn’t write any blog posts. I also didn’t touch my Kindle, and read physical books. What a week!
Then the work week rolled in after.
I was feeling refreshed, like starting off from a clean, blank state. But...when it comes to writing for this blog, I also seemed to have scrubbed off all momentum built in from before.
In school, we learnt about the law of inertia. When a body is at rest, it will remain at rest unless acted upon by a force. When the body is moving at constant speed, it will keep moving in a straight line at the same speed unless it is also acted upon by a force.
It’s fascinating when you are experiencing it. You are completely aware that you are in the inertia state.
You won’t feel lazy. You also won’t feel a sense of dread thinking about the task. You actually like the task and enjoy it. You are just stuck in the rest mode, and finding some resistance in moving. It’s just inertia.
How to overcome the law of inertia?
Apply some force. Give yourself a kick in the butt.
I want to write, so I just sit down to write about this.