A Public Service Announcement regarding The First Law of Motion
Whenever a man makes haste, God too hastens with him. —Aeschylus
Quick enough, if good enough. —St. Jerome
I go, I go; look how I go,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.
—William Shakespeare
Above: Every man has his mountain; yet he alone can pick up his sack, trudge upward, and shoot for the top.
Essayist, mathematician, and self-described flâneur Nassim Nicholas Taleb once wrote, “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
To the above I would add a fourth: inertia.
A chameleon that takes many forms—including Netflix, just five more minutes, and your reading this very email, dear reader—inertia has likely stolen more waking hours, days, weeks from you than any other hindrance in your life.
Fight it without let up lest it rob you of making and doing things that actually matter to people.
The Great Lie of the Information Age is the conflation of consumption and production. To paraphrase Churchill, never was so much made for so many by so few.
No golfer ever got a hole in one by watching the PGA Tour.
No student ever aced a test by organizing his notes.
No soldier ever won a war by cowering in his foxhole.
What much more important phone call, project, task, or act of kindness are you putting off by reading these words?
Get up, get jazzed, and get to it.
After all, there’s no time like the present.