I don’t think I’ll ever stop being fascinated by the simple idea that iterative work can lead to huge accomplishments.
I was sitting down to write this post, pondering a topic, and I noticed that at some point last week I’d passed the one hundred post milestone on this writing project.
Navel gazing could have easily followed, and maybe that’s all this post is. But I’d like to think that it is a self-referential example of my point, too.
A few times per week for the last five months I’ve sat down with a hot tea and my keyboard and written out a few words on a topic related to the mission of this project: to talk about the fun and frustration of creative exploration, to poke at the obvious and pry into the obscure, and to generally reflect on the thousands upon thousands of aspects of what it takes to bootstrap oneself into a creative professional life no matter your career stage—the first person perspective version of that.
And so I write, and often I’ve preached upon the simplest of simple topics: just putting in the work. Doing it. Actually writing, making, or creating—no matter how small or incremental it might seem.
By example, one of the things I create incrementally is this collection of words, writing oft disconnected thoughts about the process itself: navel gazing upon navel gazing.
One hundred posts later my incremental effort sits around forty thousand words: a short book worth of text and ideas posted here for people to read and enjoy. If that’s not something huge from a hundred little iterative efforts I don’t know what is.
Terms FROm this POSt
- career
- I willingly stepped away from a comfortable job in 2023 to pursue something with more meaning and purpose. We live in a society that values productivity above many other things, so questioning career (that pursuit of productivity perfection and identity) is a challenging thing. I write a lot about careers and career change because it is a defining part of what I am.
- incremental
- If you’ve never come across the old adage “Rome wasn’t built in a day” you’re missing out. I tend to lean into the idea that when people are saying this they are trying to tell you good things take time, but my hot take on this is turn of phrase is that great things are built stone by stone, day by day, year by year: incrementally, be you talking about an ancient empire or some obscure skill and hobby.
- keyboard
- Maybe it’s for typing. Maybe it’s for coding. Maybe it’s for making music. A bed of buttons arrayed for digital input is my favourite user interface and I’ll write about them often in their many varieties.
- professional
- There is a formality to this term, linked to the idea of a captial-P professional like a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. Instead, I often use it simple to refer to the span in my life as a average joe salaryman, sitting at a desk in a neat shirt and tie and replying to emails: I was a business professional, but lacking any real formal certification.
