The Two-Way Snowball (2 Min Read) | Vol. 162

August 01, 2025

“Momentum goes both ways.” – James Clear

The Two-Way Snowball

Every habit in your life is quietly building momentum. Right now. While you’re reading this.

The workout you did this morning? It’s building positive momentum toward your health and wellness. The mindless scrolling you did last night? It’s building negative momentum toward anxiety and distraction. The sales calls you made yesterday? Positive momentum toward your goals. The Netflix binge instead of making calls? Negative momentum.

There is no neutral. As much as we sometimes want to, there is no staying in the same place. You’re either moving toward the life you want or away from it, one habit at a time.

As Gary shared in our recent podcast, “Small bad habits are working against us.” But here’s the thing—we often don’t notice until we hit what he called “the curve.” You don’t wake up one day suddenly out of shape. You don’t suddenly find yourself in debt. You don’t suddenly lose all your relationships. It happens incrementally, habit by habit, choice by choice, until you reach the elbow of the curve where the results become impossible to ignore. It’s like the famous exchange in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

Insights like Mike’s only happen in retrospect. We’re living our lives day by day. It’s hard to see the patterns. The person working out every morning doesn’t feel dramatically stronger after day three. The person eating fast food daily doesn’t feel dramatically worse after a week. But the trajectories are set. The momentum is building. 

In the podcast, I mentioned how James Clear puts it in Atomic Habits: a 1% improvement every day will add up to you being 37 times better at the end of the year. Conversely, a 1% decline every day can quickly take you to zero. The changes are imperceptible in the moment but extraordinary over time.

This is both terrifying and liberating. Terrifying because your bad habits are working against you right now, building negative momentum you may not even realize. Liberating because it means you have more control than you think. You can choose which direction your snowball rolls.

As Gary reminded us in the podcast about the myelin effect: “Every time you do the same thing, you create myelin which wraps around the neuron and smooths the path.” You’re rewiring your brain for whatever you repeatedly do. Choose wisely.

The question isn’t whether you’ll have momentum. You already do. The question is: which direction is it heading?

One question to ponder in your thinking time: What’s one habit I currently have that’s building momentum away from the life I want? 

Make an Impact!
Jay Papasan
Co-author of The ONE Thing & The Millionaire Real Estate Agent