Patrick Mosher uses the physics formula for momentum to help you move stalled projects forward. Mass is the effort required, velocity is your deadline. He walks you through estimating how much work a goal actually takes, then blocking time to do it.
Chapters
there's so many of these terms that we use in our world, in our organization design and development and change management world. And just in corporate America, we go, we use words like momentum. We don't have enough momentum for this project. Oh, we have so much inertia. Oh, there's so much resistance. These are all science terms. And I'm a geek. You know this about me, so I'm a geek. So momentum actually is a physics term, and it's rho equals mv. Voilà, there it is. That's the formula for momentum. Rho equals mv, and m is mass, v is velocity, and then the little, uh, Carrot on top is, is a vector. Okay. Now, as we jump into this, I want you to anchor this conversation on an initiative, a project that you have, either that you are not getting the momentum you want out of it, or that it's not starting, like you have lots of inertia about it. So, so, Write it down in your journal or think about it, because I, as you're walking out the door, what is that one thing that doesn't have the momentum or has inertia that's hard to get over? You got it, Amber? Mm-hmm. Because I, you got it? Uh-oh, she froze. She walked out of her Wi-Fi. There she is. Oh, there she is. Do you have your project in your mind? Whatever it is. Oh, I got it. Okay, great. So then, um, so, so anchor that, and I'm gonna go through the 3 terms. This is gonna be so good. This is like the quick momentum version. I had an hour allocated for this. We're gonna do this in like 10 minutes, which is so good. I love it. So the 3 pieces of this are M, which is mass. Okay, mass is in our terms effort. So, uh, when you have this, this goal that you have, this initiative that you have, there's a goal attached to this of some sort. Um, are you clear about how much effort it's going to take? And I'd say probably not. Um, you know, so, so that— so, and, and being Accenture— oh, look at the leaves behind Kazai! Oh my gosh, it's beautiful. Oh, beautiful. You're on mute. I don't know if I can show you this, but they look like someone painted them. I know. It's just beautiful. It's amazing. Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay. Yeah. So effort. Now, I'm not going to go into this with us from an Accenture perspective, but there's a whole thing about estimating the effort so that you know how big the mass is of the thing you're trying to move. Too many entrepreneurs, and we're both, you know, we, we're all like a foot in both worlds, but too many entrepreneurs go like, I'm gonna do that. And they have no idea the effort required to do this thing. And so that, but then they attach a deadline to it and then they burn out. Or I've literally heard of people going to the hospital because they just were just, just ran too hard because they were trying to get this thing done and it didn't, and it was too much. And it's, that is an effort estimating problem. We're not gonna talk about estimating today, but that's the mass. Think about the mass of something is how big is that ball, right? A little ball has very little mass. A larger ball has a bigger mass. But also, it's not just size of the ball, but it's density of the ball too, right? So, so, so think about like, how much, how dense is this? How much mass is there for this thing? So, so that's the first thing to think about, about this thing you want to get done is how much effort is there. And maybe in your head just now, just go like high, medium, low. Now the strategy that I'm going to just— that you both know with the strategy for effort is to allocate time for it. So, so if you have, if you have something that's not generating the momentum you want, One strategy is, am I allocating enough time per week to do it, or per day, whatever that is, right? And in your head, make a commitment to going like, if this is really a high priority, I need to allocate time to it. Mm-hmm. A day, an hour a day, 5 hours a week, you know, 30 hours a month, whatever it is. But, but, but that's, that's one thing that you probably haven't done. And you both go like, oh, I know I should do that. but it's a do, right? So that's a piece of mass, estimating how big is the effort and then allocating the time. V, velocity, is distance over time. Okay? Now, time is a deadline. Do you both have deadlines for the thing that you just— your anchor that you have? There's a deadline. Is it December 31st? Is it October 31st? But you have a deadline for this thing? Mm-hmm. Okay.
