Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends could have been talking to many of us…. well, certainly she could have been talking to me, when she points out that inertia takes over when it comes to updating our technology to be more productive and profitable.

Inertia” a law of nature can shape our attitudes toward technology and get in the way of growing our businesses and becoming wildly profitable — the way we know we were meant to be.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “yeah, but I love technology. I get a thrill every time I get a shiny new laptop or the latest Blackberry model in a sleek color or some other exciting new gadget.”

And that’s great. But some technology lacks the instant gratification of an enticing new gadget.

Instead, we are more likely to be afflicted by a principle identified by Sir Issac Newton centuries ago — the law of inertia:

“A body in motion tends to remain in motion, a body at rest tends to remain at rest.”

Inertia is a force that can hold us back in all kinds of things and especially when it comes to technology — if we let it. If you’ve ever had thoughts like the following, chances are the law of inertia is affecting your decision making:

• We feel like slaves to email, but we just “accept” the status quo and don’t bother to investigate whether there are time saving solutions.
• We plan to get to growth initiatives, but we never seem to reach the point of automating the repetitive daily work that keeps our staff from tackling those new initiatives.
• We don’t take steps to protect our business data with backups and disaster recovery plans, because it requires a couple of extra steps.

Attitudes and behaviors like these can prevent us from growing our businesses; from becoming more profitable; and from protecting our businesses from harm.

Implementing new technology usually requires us to step a bit out of our comfort zones. It requires us to do extra things — usually not much, but it feels like something extra.

So it becomes easier to just muddle along with the status quo. Making no decision and taking no action involves less effort, than taking steps to learn about technology ourselves or to put together project teams to implement productivity solutions, or to do something that deep down inside, you really know you should be doing (like disaster recovery planning).”

Anita goes on to say be smart and confront those attitudes.  Be proactive.  Get moving.  Fix all the little things to add up to big results.

For the entire post go to Isaac Newton Could Have Predicted Our Technology Attitudes