Radical Incrementalism of Fun

 

Dall-E birch forest photomosaic 2

Brendan Leonard from Outside mag:

In his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman briefly references the concept of radical incrementalism. Burkeman writes about psychology professor Robert Boice, who studied writing habits of other academic professionals. Boice found that PhD students who wrote a little bit per day—even as little as 10 minutes—were more productive and less anxious than those who tried to write in big chunks (which they often procrastinated on until they had a deadline coming up).

Radical incrementalism has been mostly embraced in academia, policymaking, and even self-improvement. But I think it’s also an interesting way to look at having more fun: Instead of wishing I had the money and time to take a month or several to do some sort of very notable human-powered adventure to the top of a mountain or across a country, how about doing some less-notable stuff near where I live every week, or every month? 

This is, of course, the thesis of my friend Alastair Humphreys’ 2014 book Microadventures—and also the theme of a project he did years ago in which he tried to eat at a London restaurant from a country starting with each letter of the alphabet (Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cambodia, et cetera). So I’m not exactly saying something brand-new here. But let’s be honest with ourselves: I’m not going to climb Mt. Everest next year, and the odds are pretty good that you’re not planning to either. So we might as well dream up some other fun stuff to do