I recently read a book (4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman) where I came across this phrase, and I just love it! It is the perfect expression of something I have been working on for a while.
It is about the easy way to get big jobs done: do a small, time-limited amount every day, stopping before you’ve run out of energy or enthusiasm. By approaching it in this way, you don’t put off doing the next piece because you haven’t pushed yourself previously, and by consistently doing a bit of the task, you clear it easily and without effort.
You can use this method to do things like de-clutter your home, clear your garden of winter debris or weed the flower beds, sort out holiday arrangements, clear emails – well, almost anything!
I have long been an advocate of turning bigger jobs into projects, where success is counted, not as finishing the whole thing, but as completing one stage of the project. This takes it further – it’s radical. Now success is: ‘I did my 15 – 30 minutes today.’
And of course, if you have several different things you’re applying the principle to, you can feel really good about yourself when you say: ‘I did a bit of this one, and some of that one, and a bit of the other one too.’
So next time you have a job you’re putting off, consider using radical incrementalism to get it done the easy way.