Forward Momentum

A note on movement, clarity, and continuing without certainty

Somewhere between projects, places, and plans, I stopped expecting things to settle.

Not in a dramatic way.
More as a quiet adjustment.

Travel does that. So does creative work. So does building anything without a guaranteed outcome. You learn quickly that waiting for clarity is often another way of standing still.

The world keeps moving.
Deadlines shift.
People change.
Circumstances arrive unannounced.

And yet, there is always a next step.

Not a perfect one.
Just the next.

I’ve noticed that most of our discomfort doesn’t come from change itself, but from the expectation that things should have stabilised by now. We plan as if certainty will eventually show up and take over — as if consistency is something we earn through effort.

Living between places makes that assumption harder to maintain. Movement strips away the illusion that things will eventually pause long enough for us to feel ready.

What if the work isn’t to eliminate uncertainty, but to learn how to move well inside it?

In design, the most enduring objects aren’t rigid. They flex. They age. They adapt to hands, light, weather, and use. They’re built with the assumption that conditions will change.

People are no different.

What sustains momentum — in work, leadership, or life — is rarely control. It’s orientation. A sense of direction that doesn’t collapse when the environment does.

Forward doesn’t always look like progress.
Sometimes it looks like steadiness.
Sometimes it looks like restraint.
Sometimes it’s simply choosing not to retreat.

There’s a particular calm that comes from releasing the pressure to resolve everything at once. When the urge to overhaul gives way to something quieter — a willingness to continue without reinvention.

A reset doesn’t need to be dramatic to be meaningful.

This is often where momentum returns — not through force, but through permission.

Forward momentum is progress.

Once you stop arguing with the terrain, energy reappears. Decisions become lighter. Responsibility becomes clearer. Movement becomes possible again.

Not because everything makes sense —
but because you’ve stopped waiting for it to.

This way of moving has followed me across cities, industries, and roles. The observation repeats itself in different forms, but the lesson remains unchanged.

What we carry matters. Not just materially, but internally — the rituals, the tools, the habits that allow us to keep going without hardening.

The objects we choose often reveal more about how we move through the world than we realise.

You don’t need certainty to move forward.
You need enough clarity to take the next step with intention.

The rest reveals itself later.

This line of thinking is explored more fully in my forthcoming book, Managing Chaos, published January 31.