A Public Service Announcement regarding The First Law of Motion

Or: Against Inertia

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.

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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.

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Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.

If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on Twitter.

With sincere gratitude,

Tom