You raise a great example: A body in motion tends to stay in motion, a body at rest tends to stay at rest. Whichever state you’re in, its easiest to stay there. Inertia is enormously powerful, even when you’re already moving.

The world is designed to slow us down, to provide friction for that effortless forward movement. But even though it takes effort to keep moving at a certain pace, or even to move faster, it takes the most effort to go from nothing to something.

Heading in an “upward” direction as you put it involves a mix of struggle, discomfort and self-confidence.

It is amazing to me that people in my parents’ generation often stayed with the same organizations for the lion’s share of their careers, despite lack of opportunities to further themselves personally and professionally. This still occurs but seemingly less frequently (I am in my 30’s and most of my friends have in 10+ years worked for at least 3 different organizations).

Societal conventions and other group/peer pressures go a long way to explaining why people stayed with the same organization for their entire career only a few decades ago.

We are fortunate that today both conventions and web tools that are available to all permit a much greater opportunity to try new things and head “up” (whatever that entails for the individual). But, because “heading up” is easier than it has been in while – the costs of what you call “flatlining” are, I believe, exacerbated.

Thanks.