Have you ever forced yourself to your desk because you were worried about losing your momentum?
Have you ever looked back at a good string of writing days and thought, oh yes, the momentum I had then?
Have you been wishing for the momentum to visit you again, like it used to in The Before Times?
Me too lol.
But I have a new theory, and after some testing, I feel confident enough to share it with you all.
I think that at least 80% of the time, when we say we have momentum with a project, we actually mean that we have clarity.
If you've been writing every day for 2 weeks, you probably have a lot of clarity - no part of the text feels unfamiliar, it all feels recent and alive, and even if you don't have detailed notes, it isn't too much work to figure out where you left off and what needs to come next.
There's a clarity that comes from being in the headspace of a project - when you know where you are and what needs to be done, it's easier to get started. It's easier to stay in the flow because you're not using all your energy to reorient and refamiliarize yourself.
So if you're looking for momentum, think about some things you can do to introduce some clarity:
Spend some time leaving good notes for yourself - where to start the next day, what you were thinking about, what to read.
Make your tasks as actionable, small, and concrete as possible. For example, instead of "write methods section", break that into 15 or 20 tasks like "describe lab equipment".
Schedule some time to reread your writing and your notes to refamiliarize yourself with projects that are feeling distant.
Spend a few minutes (even just 5) journaling about your work to ease into the headspace on days where it would be hard or impossible to do more.
Challenge the idea that momentum is something ineffable that you can't control, and start believing that you can create your own with your clarity.