Nudge Theory and the Sharpening of Knives

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Autumn Beech leaves – Clumber Park

When I switched on, I noticed that I had 85 Drafts. They aren’t actually drafts, which I always think of as versions of a completed article, they are actually false starts. Like I said when talking about poetry recently – I tend to save false starts and use bits of them for other things. However, it seems like a lot so I thought I’d investigate.

I now have 62 drafts. Twenty three have been trashed, varying in length from 900 words to zero words. I’m not sure how or why I saved that one. Several only have one or two paragraphs in them, but using 200 as a rough average I have just deleted 4,600 words. That’s 1/10th of a novel. It seems like a lot when you add it up, but some of my other posts involve editing out more words than I eventually end up with. Others, I admit, are just thrown onto the page and published without a second thought. You can always tell them They are the ones full of typos. Or the ones about having ten minutes to write my 250 words.

Before you go away with the idea that I have been through 85 drafts and kept 62, I haven’t. I have been through 26 drafts and thrown 23 out. In a few days i will go through another slice of them with similar results.

It’s like nudge theory and a small reminder making a big difference. If you read the article it tends to suggest that there is little effect, the British Government seems to think nudging does some good and despite what I often say about governments, they don’t pay to do things unless they are getting something back.

In my version of nudge theory I tell myself, and keep telling myself something needs doing. Eventually, little by little, it will (mostly) get done.

Autumn leaves – Rufford Abbey

I decided to do more housework, so I started by washing up almost every day. Last week I started washing up on the day the plates were used. It’s a small but important improvement. Hoovering, dusting and polishing are next on the list, though it may be a while. I’m looking for improvement, not perfection.

My version of nudge theory is really knife theory. Julia, as I may have mentioned, has a knife-blunting super power. I gave up the struggle to keep knives sharp some years ago. And that was how it stayed – every cooking session was a reproach to me as I struggled with blunt knives. Eventually, as I started to sort things out, I started to resharpen them.  I can’t find my whetstone so I use one of those sharpeners where you draw the knife through a slot with concealed sharpeners. I didn’t do much, just a couple of strokes every few days. After a week they were improved. After three weeks they are  sharp and kitchen work is easier.

And that’s why, ithin a week I intend to reduce my Drafts folder to less than a dozen drafts. If I’d tried to do it all in one night, it wouldn’t have happened.

Oak leaves and frost

14 thoughts on “Nudge Theory and the Sharpening of Knives”

      2. quercuscommunity Post author

        Yes. There is a theory that I think I’ve written before, that you should aim for 100 rejections a year. I can’t actually write that fast, but it’s not a bad idea.

  2. tootlepedal

    The idea of going to the trouble of writing a post and then not using it is so alien to me that I struggle to get my head round it.

    I like your idea of very small improvements at a time. Dave Brailsford claimed that this was the secret of Team Sky’s cycling success, though I personally think that the secret was lots of money.

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