“my first & second half of 2019 felt like two different years”

Last week my friend posted a meme on Instagram that read, “my first & second half of 2019 felt like two different years.” That phrase captured my experience. 

If you remember, Jaja in (or as a friend recently called it, From the Desk of Jahan), started because I was experiencing an unexpected stretch of unemployment, and I was very pissed off about it. I knew before starting how hard writing is, and so I honestly don’t have a clue why I chose to channel my frustration this way! 

Producing content for the first few months of Jaja in was so difficult that it was practically masochistic. But, partially under pressure (harassment) from my mother, I committed to doing it for a year. And so, no matter how I was feeling, I would just force myself to make something, anything, so long as it wasn’t total garbage (and I wasn’t always successful there either!). 

Somewhere around week 20, changes I’d been intuitively making sort of clicked into place. I don’t know if it got easier or if I just got better, but either way, the whole process became less painful. Also around then, my work became more consistent, and I was able to ease up on my financial austerity measures, which helped me to relax. (By the way, the impact of stress on the mind and body cannot be understated. Stress is bad.) Anyway, when I was less stressed, I was able to think more freely, broadly, and thoughtfully, which led to more interesting conversations and new relationships. 

In the last few months, things have really picked up, and I honestly feel like they’re starting to work in sync. My work contract was extended for longer than I’d expected, which for the first time, gives me an opportunity to plan a little without having to consider endless contingencies. Not only that, I’m finding a new type of joy from writing my posts each week, and I’m inspired because I’m paying attention to the world in new ways. And lastly, the quality of my relationships have continued to deepen and improve. 

In a word, I feel like I finally have some momentum– it just took the whole first half of the year to get it!

This is what I had in mind on Thursday night when, after the debates, I read a monograph by Jim Collins called Turning the Flywheel. Collins has studied companies for the last 25 years and has distilled his knowledge into four books. This separate publication is dedicated solely to momentum and the mechanism that propels it, called the flywheel. The flywheel is predicated on the insight that if you can figure out the handful of actions that, if achieved, will feed into each other, eventually the flywheel will turn on its own, and its momentum will become unstoppable. 

Here’s Jim’s sketch of Amazon’s flywheel for growth:

After watching Trump turn the impeachment into a win for himself, I feel like I finally understand why I believe he’s in such a strong position to be re-elected— he’s perfected his flywheel:

Maximize attention on himself → Create a conflict → Translate and Simplify the message for his base→ Create an “Us vs. Them” dynamic→ Center himself in the conflict → Maximize attention on himself.

I believe that momentum is critical to victory, and that Trump is a freight train going at full speed.

Los Angeles, CA, USA
December 2019