The Flywheel

Picture a huge, heavy flywheel..and imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axel as fast as possible.

Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing, and after two or three hours of persistent effort you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn.

Then, at some point — breakthrough!

You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster.

Now suppose someone came along and asked, “What was the one big push that caused this thing to go so fast?”