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The Two Kinds of Incremental Progress
The kind that leads somewhere and the kind that doesn’t
I’ve been struggling to organize my home office for years. I’ve made a variety of resolutions to ‘finally’ buy the right chair or invent an organization scheme for my notes, tidy a little bit each evening — none of it stuck.
I did tidy in small increments as planned. But I ended up cleaning the same layer or clutter over and over as it built back up, never getting any closer to the comfortable, organized office I needed.
Taking a tiny step in a process that seems overwhelming is one of the best ways to start. However, all types of incremental change are not equally effective.
I’ve often come across this pattern of incremental changes that don’t add up to anything, on a small scale my own life, and also broadly in social groups, companies and society. It applies to nutrition, lifestyle, social change and technological change — any area where we apply effort, yet nothing seems to be happening and so our attempts fizzle out.
What do you need to make incremental change lead you where you want to go?
Increments of the right size and shape
Making changes to your behavior, however small, has costs in effort and…
