The Importance of Momentum

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Disillusionment, laziness and many other forces can lead to a lack of effort. It is important to avoid this temptation - for you can be the greatest impediment to your success.

They say, “Nothing breeds success like success” – and it’s true to an extent. The energy, encouragement and drive of achievement can yield a productive fervor, but the whirlwind of attention can skew perspective and tempt us to rest on our laurels. When our heads come down from the clouds we find we’ve squandered opportunity and face an uphill effort to make a comeback.

Perhaps even more critical than the ability to take advantage of success is the ability to recover from failure. Successful people aren’t strangers to failure – quite the contrary. Donald Trump has lost almost as many fortunes as he’s made, the key to his continued prominence is that he keeps going. We mustn’t allow any disappointment to prevent us from continued creative effort.

Whether or not you are accomplishing your goals, you must maintain momentum in order to achieve further success. Momentum, the tendency to continue at our current velocity, can be harnessed to propel our careers forward. Maintain and accelerate your level of effort and your productivity. At each success or failure along the way, evaluate your situation. It’s easier to realign your trajectory, bounce off a wall, than it is to restart from nothing.

Professionals manage their time, ensuring productivity by the expansion and application of their craft. They have developed the ability to sustain their creativity and apply their craft, even when they don’t feel like it. Take the time to develop habits that strengthen and support your personal workflow. Through practice, study and the application of experience, you can mature as an artist. But you must continue to do so through both success and failure.

So how do you bounce back from the disappointing collapse of all your hopes and dreams? How do you avoid the temptation to ride the wave of success and lose control? By doing something, anything, you allow yourself to maintain momentum. Change is a constant in our lives – momentum implies progress in a specific direction. You can control, or at least influence, that direction through your actions. The stronger your momentum, the easier it becomes to maintain your level of productivity.

When we resign to depression, discouragement and sloth we weaken the productive habits we’ve developed as artists and strengthen our capacity to impede our own success. The greatest restriction of productivity is inactivity. Productivity doesn’t guarantee success by itself, but a lack of productivity does guarantee failure.

This isn’t to say disappointment doesn’t hurt. It is important to address emotional and psychological health. If you need a break, take your break – but set a date when you will return to work and stick to it. Don’t allow yourself to stop being productive indefinitely. Take the time you need to absorb your experience and appreciate its value. Recognize that everyone experiences failure, it can’t be avoided and is the true measure of experience. Evaluate if you would do anything different facing a similar situation in the future (this is called “learning”), and move on.

Don’t forget that pain and pressure often produce great results. Move your emotional energy into your artwork. Open yourself honestly and you may surprise yourself with what you can create.

If you are a writer, write. If you are a producer, hunt for that next project. If you are a musician, break out your instrument. You don’t have to create brilliance (as an exacting professional you throw 90% away already), but create something.