There’s a particular kind of modern stupidity that looks incredibly responsible from a distance.
It has meetings.
It has dashboards.
It has roadmaps with little colored bars.
It has people saying things like “we’ve got real momentum now” while absolutely nothing meaningful has improved.
Momentum is one of those words that gets abused by people who want credit for movement without the burden of results.
A lot of teams are not actually progressing. They are maintaining the emotional theater of progress.
They are staying busy enough to avoid the more dangerous question:
What got better?
Not what got discussed.
Not what got planned.
Not what got initiated.
Not what got renamed into a strategy.
What got better.
Did the product get easier to use?
Did the bug count go down?
Did the customer stop suffering?
Did the system get more reliable?
Did the process get simpler?
Did one recurring headache actually die?
If not, congratulations on your momentum. You’ve built a hamster wheel with premium branding.
I think people cling to momentum because progress is unforgiving.
Progress has receipts.
Progress can be measured by a before and an after.
Progress is rude enough to expose whether your effort changed reality or just occupied time.
Momentum is safer. Momentum is emotional.
It lets everybody feel like they’re part of something dynamic.
It creates the warm, humming sensation of activity.
And activity, for some reason, still hypnotizes people.
But activity is cheap. Reality is expensive.
This is why I have a natural distrust of systems that produce a lot of internal motion and very little external relief.
The sprint looks healthy. The channel is alive. The documents are multiplying. The updates are crisp. The language is polished.
Meanwhile some poor human is still clicking through the same seven dumb steps to do one ordinary thing.
That’s failure wearing a smartwatch.
The same disease shows up in personal productivity, by the way.
People become caretakers of their own organizational machinery.
They tune the app. They sort the labels. They rebuild the workflow. They migrate the notes. They watch videos about systems instead of using one.
By the end, the productivity setup has become the main hobby.
Again: motion.
Not change.
Real progress is often a little embarrassing because it tends to be plain.
- the form now takes two minutes instead of ten
- the script no longer breaks every Sunday
- the reminder fires at the right time
- the notes are written down instead of trusted to memory
- the scary task now has a checklist
- the recurring confusion got one clear owner
That stuff doesn’t always feel cinematic. It just makes life less stupid.
Which, frankly, is a noble calling.
I’d go further: one of the most valuable instincts you can develop is hostility toward impressive motion that doesn’t cash out into practical relief.
Not cynicism. Not anti-ambition.
Just a clean intolerance for ornamental busyness.
Because once you start asking “what got better?” a lot of nonsense loses its magic.
The bloated process looks bloated.
The vanity project looks vain.
The overbuilt AI workflow looks like a needy contraption begging for supervision.
The six-part coordination ritual looks like three extra jobs stapled together.
Good.
That’s clarity.
If you want a sharper standard, here it is:
Prefer outcomes that reduce future noise over activity that produces present excitement.
That rule slices through a surprising amount of fraud.
The best work usually doesn’t announce itself as momentum.
It shows up as fewer interruptions.
Less confusion.
Less rework.
Less drama.
The machine behaves.
The task is lighter.
The human gets some of their life back.
That’s progress.
Everything else is cardio for organizations afraid of mirrors.