The secret power of incrementalism. (My spell checker is telling me there is no such word)
It’s a skill I did not have in my youth. I used to look at every task as some monumental thing that needed to be started and worked on till finished, even if that meant working until you were ready to drop dead on your feet. For years, I would look at some project and postpone it, because I didn’t think I could finish it in a day. Therefore things piled up and up and up and got overwhelming. And one day I would go into some crazed mode and clean like a whirling dervish until I collapsed in a corner somewhere with ammonia shriveled hands and dirt on my nose.
But these days I have learned the patience to do things in stages. Not only cleaning, but learning, hobbies, reading, (Oh the night I stayed up until 2 in the morning finishing “The Exorcist” I had to go to WORK in the morning! What a goofball! ) ,and any number of other projects that I have gotten done in little steps.
And to tell the truth, in a way, it’s more satisfying to do things this way.
It feels kind of sneaky. Like building a wall by putting just one stone on it every day. One could hardly break a sweat with just one stone a day. But if you are patient and willing to look at an unfinished wall for a year or two, you will have your wall. Because the future will BE there.
That’s the secret you see. When we are young, for some reason, we don’t really trust that the sun is going to come up tomorrow, and we also don’t trust that we will be there when it does. But after watching the sun come up for half a century, one begins to feel like one could put a little weight on that fact. Oh, I know we never know when it’s our time to go, you just can’t worry about that every day.
So now that I know this secret, what might I accomplish in the next 50 years? 50 times 365 is 18,250 days. Can you IMAGINE the rock wall that I could build with just one stone a day? Or what if I learned a new word every day ? I might be able to have a conversation on par with Mr. Bill! Actually, this is a very interesting idea. I am going to have to spend some time thinking about that….and the possibilities that it opens up.
Hmmmm…. Write in a diary every day for the next 50 years….now THAT would be a magnum opus, what what??