I have been thinking a lot lately about the power of momentum.
This week I closed all 3 rings on my Apple Watch for the 739th day in a row.
Lunatic stuff.
I started this journey on New Year’s Eve of 2022 after buying an Apple Watch for the first time.
I had just turned 41 and I wasn’t woefully out of shape but I just had a gut feel (Dad joke alert) it was time – I had to finally form the daily habit of getting active after years of having it on my to-do list.
Although I knew I needed to make a change, I had no idea how much that $200 watch would teach me about habit formation or how much closing those fitness rings each day would hook into an intense and sometimes irrational competitive nature I have always had.
It also taught me a lot about the power of momentum.
“I’m going to try to close my rings each day in January.”
That was the initial goal I shared with my unimpressed, yet mildly amused wife and kids after I bought it.
That January goal led to February, then Q1, then Q2, then the whole year of 2023 and beyond…I have been steadily moving the goalposts like the entrepreneur I am ever since.
As an aside, that initial amusement from my family on my January 2023 goal has turned into smirks and eye rolls – if you mention it to Paige or my kids you’ll probably hear something along the lines of – “that damn watch.”
I have done irrational, non-sensical things to close those 3 rings.
I walked 3 miles in freezing temperatures in between vomiting on a day I had food poisoning.
I walked circles around multiple West Texas gas stations to keep progress on a long road trip as the truck was refueling.
I changed clothes to walk laps in airports, pulled over to trek up and down floors in parking garages to stay out of rainstorms and all kinds of other weird things that have now become normal just to satisfy a watch that looks ridiculous on my wrist, is probably listening to me and barely holds a charge through the day anymore.
All I get in return is a poorly designed, fleeting closed ring “new record” alert each day when I get them closed.
But I’m counting.
I don’t share this to pat myself on the back or call attention to the fact that I’m still far from the fitness level I want to have but instead to just share how irrational, yet effective the momentum created by that ridiculous watch has been for me.
And I’m trying to extend the impact of this lesson into other areas of my life this year with some additional “momentum marks” for the coming year.
One of my 2025 momentum marks is using AI at least once a day and my favorite resource on that front, Perplexity.ai, tells me there are many reasons why momentum is so effective in forming habits and growing but the one that jumped out at me as the most important is overcoming inertia.
It’s always harder to start something new – even when you know you need to do it – than it is to continue momentum on something you’re already doing. It sounds obvious but we often don’t take advantage of that truth.
James Clear’s masterpiece, Atomic Habits, took it a step further by teaching the wisdom of “habit stacking.”
Here’s some of what he says about it on his website:
“When it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behavior to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.”
This strategy allows you to take the momentum on one habit you have already formed and share it with a new habit you want to form.
I have stacked meditation, prayer, podcasts (a lot of Texas Football this playoff season) and some daily vitamin D on top of the ‘closed rings’ habit, each of which were habits I struggled to get momentum on when I tried to start doing each of these on their own.
If I had tried to do all of those at once I would have failed – I certainly have plenty in the past. But in creating one lane of momentum it opened up a lot of new possibilities for me on habits I haven’t been strong enough to form before now.
How do you see momentum in your life?
Have you opened up a lane you can stack onto?
I’d love to hear more about it.
