Existence is Inertia

Back again. Three minutes later. Another thought. Our existence is inertia. We do things because we're already doing them.

Start writing. Can't stop. Keep writing. Even harder to stop.

Start eating. Can't stop. Keep eating. Can't stop until your body says stop.

That's why it's so important to just start, even if it's small. Because it's easier and gets easier as you start and continue. The hard becomes easier when you start. Keep going and you might even make the impossible doable.

I can think of a lot of things that have built up so much inertia for me personally that I can't imagine not doing them anymore.

The biggest one is closing my rings — I've done it for almost 1700 days in a row at this point. Averaging 1300+ calories a day with at least 800 calories (and for a brief time, initially 690 calories) per day for almost 5 years. There's so much inertia in making sure I at least hit 800 calories (which is like one hour of good exercise, two walks, and my morning workout) for the day. I won't miss a day no matter what — I've worked out with the flu, COVID, multi-day international flights. Literally has been no matter what for the last five years.

The second one is my morning routine. You could say that it started when I was a kid — first thing I have to do bar none is go pee. That's been true as long as I remember so that's 28 years of inertia right there. In all seriousness, after I pee, I put on face sun screen and deodorant, I weigh myself, put on my clothes that I set out the night before including my indoor shoes, then go outside drink a big glass of water and write down my dreams at the same time before making a smoothie (banana, kale and/or spinach, yogurt, protein powder, frozen strawberries) and then write whatever comes to mind.

I then do my morning HIIT workout (10 min Chris Heria workout, 40 pushups feet on ball 20 pushups hands on ball, 10 ab roller, 5 single arm push-up each side, 5 hand stand push ups) while making some coffee at the very end from 42.5 g of beans + 700 mL of water at 96 celsius. I then read my bible (Stratechery) and take Anki notes while enjoying the coffee. Often, I try to do a morning walk with Sarah, but this is a work in progress.

What's interesting about the morning routine is not only does it have inertia, it's evolved over time. In 2018 when I first started living in Chicago, I started doing the Kevin D. Lo morning smoothie for breakfast. I've evolved the ingredients over time but that was the birth of the morning routine — stringing together that smoothie with my bathroom stuff before walking to work.

Then I read the book Limitless by Jim Kwik while I was in Chicago — while a lot of the book I didn't adopt, one of the things that the book helped me make more concrete in my head was the idea of a morning routine. So that's when I formalized bathroom stuff and smoothie into more than just a few things I did before work.

During COVID, I needed to do more indoor exercise, which prompted adding the 10 minute Chris Heria HIIT workout. This was also a process of experimentation — I needed the goldilocks workout where it wasn't too hard that I'd dread doing it every morning but not too easy that it didn't make me feel like my metabolism turned on.

I wanted to be more disciplined about reading Stratechery so I committed to reading after my morning workout. Later I got into coffee so I added making coffee to the routine which I could have while reading. Then I heard what Huberman said about getting sunlight in the morning — so now I've been off and on about adding a morning walk.

What this highlights is that not only is inertia useful to build a consistent habit out of something, it allows you to “transfer” inertia to other things that you might have trouble doing. And I saw transfer in quotes because it literally is a transfer — there is a price to transferring inertia. Add too many things and the friction you add makes it harding to do the existing things. That's why I only add one thing at a time, and maybe even smaller things initially to build up inertia.