Pyschoinertia

The first hard science most people learn is Newton’s First Law, “An object persists in its state of moving or rest unless acted upon by a force.”  This is the concept of inertia.  A rock sitting on the ground won’t start moving unless something comes along and pushes it.  The same rock once it starts moving will keep moving until it is acted upon by a force, such as friction with the ground or hitting another object.

The second law states, “The acceleration of an object is proportional to the acting force divided by the objects mass.”  It is usually expressed in a slightly different format, Force equals Mass times Acceleration.  Mass is the quantification of inertia; it represents how difficult it is to change an object’s motion, or lack thereof.  Mass can be thought of as how much substance an object has, and in the presence of gravity an objects weight is equal to its mass times gravity.

Newton’s third law gets more specific, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces two bodies exert on each other are always equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.”  The idea behind the third law is that forces are always balanced, for instance if you were to impart a force onto a ball, or throw it, the ball is pushing back on your hand just as hard as you are pushing on it.  The ball accelerates much faster than you do because it has much lower mass.

In the realm of physics, people are objects just like everything else, and we all have mass and hence inertia.  If we are sitting on the couch, we aren’t going to suddenly get up and move across the room.  Something has to apply a force to our body to make it move, or as is usually the case you apply a force to another object, such as the couch or the floor and you move in the opposite direction.

When you walk across the room, you are pushing the room in the opposite direction just as hard as the room is pushing you.  However, the room weights considerably more than you and it is usually pushing on the ground and the earth definitely weights considerably more than you or the room, so the result is that when you push on the floor you are the one doing the moving.  If you were standing on a surf board in the middle of the ocean and you started walking, the surfboard would shoot out from under you while you stay pretty much in the same place, since it has much less mass and inertia than you.

People are different sizes, so they have different masses.  If a large person and a small person were pushed by the same force, the smaller one would accelerate much faster than the larger person.  So if the two people, large and small, pushed against each other, the smaller person would be propelled much faster than the larger person.

Most people understand these principles on an almost subconscious level.  They might not know the math, but they know that if they see their car rolling down a hill it would be a bad idea to get in the way.  Even children grasp the concept as they speed across the room to try to knock their father over, knowing they have to go very fast to make their father move just a little.

The same physical principles can be applied to the mind, psychophysics if you will.  A person’s thoughts and behaviors have mental inertia or psychoinertia, just as their bodies have physical inertia.  Some people, and some thoughts, have more psychoinertia than others.

Like physical inertia, if you have a lot of pyschoinertia you are much harder to move, or motivate.  But they are also much harder to demotivate or distract from what they are doing.  Imagine a giant boulder rolling along, if you throw a small branch in its way, it will crunch through it and continue on its way.  If you wanted to turn the boulder, you would have to exert tremendous force, but once it started in the new direction, it would continue.  As a result, people with high psychoinertia also find it difficult to “wind down,” because even if their body has stopped moving their mind is still trudging along.

On the other end of the spectrum are people with low mental inertia.  People with low psychoinertia are easily motivated but tend to be distractible, because it requires relatively little to get them to change mental directions.  Instead of a giant boulder, imagine a beach ball rolling along.  This time the stick will stop the ball entirely, or send it flying in a new direction.  People with low mental inertia also tend to be spontaneous.

The obvious question is whether it is better to have a lot of psychoinertia or very little, or perhaps somewhere in between.  There is no answer to that question, because life presents all kinds of challenges, some which require nimbleness of mind, and others that require perseverance.   However, if you understand which part of the spectrum you fall in, you can take advantage of the good traits and counteract the bad.

For someone on the heavy end of the spectrum, let’s say a major life event is going to be occurring in the near future, such as a new job in a new city.  Simply packing up and moving will cause a tremendous mental hardship, since while your physical body has moved to your new location, your mind is still at your old job in the old city.  Instead, picture the new job and new city, imagine living there.  If you push continuously over a longer period of time, it requires less mental strain at any one point.  When your body finally gets to the new place, you will find your mind is already at home.  This process of building up mental momentum can also be used in reverse, so rather than just stop doing something, start the mental process of stopping early.

People on the light and nimble end of the spectrum have less problems changing, but more problems staying on course.  I was careful not to use the term “stubborn” to describe those with high psychoinertia, because there is more than one way to be stubborn.  Barnacles are stubborn, not because they are heavy, but because they cling tightly to something that is.  If you push on a barnacle, the barnacle transfers that force to what it’s growing up.  So, if you cling tightly to what you are doing, then the task itself will help pull you along when a distraction arises: be stubborn.  Or, if you do get distracted just remember that it is just as easy to motivate yourself back on course as it was to get knocked off course in the first place.  The key being not to lose too much ground in the process.

Psychoinertia can also give you insight into other people.  Is your friend being stubborn because he is clinging tightly his thoughts, or is it because it simply takes a lot of effort to change his mind?  Teams work best with a combination of high and low psychoinertias.  The nimbler lighter minds are easily motivated to get things started in the right direction.  Eventually the high inertia minds will start moving along and then they’ll help keep the lighter minds motivated when distractions crop up.

The other side of the equation is force.  Force is required to generate motion in the mass, whether it is physical or mental.  There are people who are said to have forceful personalities, as in full of force.  These are the people who are capable of exerting the mental forces to motivate others.  But, they are also the ones who can motivate themselves, or keep themselves motivated in the midst of distractions.

Mental forces require balance in the same way that physical forces do.  If you were to pull someone towards you mentally or emotionally, you are pulling yourself towards them as well.  In the physical world, it is much easier to see the paired forces as they oppose each other, while in the mental world it is much more difficult.

In the physical world, a person generally moves about by pushing off the ground, the floor, or their surfboard.  The stronger the foundation the person is standing on, the harder they can push.  The mental world is the same, except the foundation is a person’s beliefs, which form from life history and the influence of others.  A person thus has a second store of inertia to push against that has been built over their life.

If you have a shaky mental foundation, no matter how much psychoinertia you have, you won’t be able to accomplish anything.  Imagine a large man trying to run while standing on a bed of marbles.  The marbles will go flying and the man will go nowhere.  A few feet away, a girl stands with her toes digging into the ground.  It might not be easy, but the girl could push the man backwards because she has the stronger foundation.

People with weak foundations have difficulty motivating themselves.  They try to push themselves, but they have nothing to push against.  If they are given outside motivation, a mental push from someone else, they can be motivated.  This is why counselors, teachers, and friends can be so influential on people who have a poor foundation, but so can a gang.

People with weak foundations can get out of the morass by latching onto a different foundation, such as a religion or a cause.  People who have struggled with a weak foundation are particularly prone to clinging to a new foundation when they find one.  The difficulty for them is that religions and causes have direction.  If they want to use the foundation to motivate their life, they have to stay with the foundation where it moves them.  If the foundation is worthwhile cause, then it will motivate in good directions, if the foundation is a gang, it will not.

Peer pressure is a battle of psychoinertia and foundation.  Children are still building their foundations, and are much more easily pulled off.  A child with a strong foundation is able to resist the pressures of their peers, even if they lack the psychoinertia themselves.  A strong role model, an external foundation, will also give the child something to cling to when pressured.

While a person might have high or low mental inertia, their trajectory through life is determined by their interactions with others and with their mental foundation.