Muddling Through
Why I want this to be the story of my life.
I’ve written fiction for at least ten minutes a day, every day for twenty years.
Let me put that ten minute goal into perspective for you. I started when my youngest child was born in December 2004. She’s a sophomore in college now.
I can write 200 words in 10 minutes. There are 7300 days in twenty years. Do you see where I’m going here?
Not counting any minutes past my ten a day, I’ve written 1,460,000 words.
There are about 80,000 words in a novel. Which means that I’ve written the equivalent of nearly 19 first drafts in the last two decades. Ten minutes at a time.
That’s a body of work. It’s a career.
And it’s a great illustration of a productivity concept called muddling through.
I was researching the idea of ‘relentless incrementalism’ yesterday and came across a 1959 article by a man named Charles Lindbolm called “The Science of Muddling Through.”
It’s a pretty boring article, to be honest. All about policy making. But, I’m captured by the idea of ‘muddling through.’ Especially in contrast to other, flashier productivity concepts.
