Golfing Is Not Rowing

Some activities have smooth progress bars: rowing, knitting, cycling, climbing, bodybuilding, etc.

For such pastimes, investing a unit of effort reaps a proportional unit of progress. Linear incrementalism is a sound strategy when success is linear. To win at rowing, row harder/better/faster/stronger than your competition.

Golf is not so smooth. Yes, each round is a state-dependent game of error-correction (i.e. Zeno's Paradox). But golf swings are coarse actions -- few swings per game, with no recourse for fine adjustment between swings.

A golf game is 65-75 swings over ~5 hours. A rowing race is 5-10 minutes of continuous effort and micro-adjustments.

Golf-like processes are characterized by mulligans. "Do-overs" are powerful when success is chaotic, i.e. sensitive to initial conditions. Baby steps are futile when your golf ball is already at the bottom of the pond. Linear incrementalism cannot resolve fatal flaws.

Failure awaits those who confuse rowing and golfing. Golf cannot be played in tidy 1-yard increments. Brute force isn't an option -- don't attempt a one-man war of attrition.

Programs like NaNoWriMo mislead aspiring writers. "Write every day" is great advice, but the first 90% of writing a book is often not writing -- it's thinking/planning/researching. There are other golf clubs in that bag. Many writers only start "writing" once their ball is very nearly in the hole.

To use a different analogy: daily habits are powerful, but effort alone cannot transmute lead into gold. To make a golden necklace, you must start with gold. Each phase of mining/appraising/smelting/shaping gold demands unique strategies.

Many creative processes (e.g. writing, entrepreneurship, sculpting, programming) are more like golfing than rowing; they are more chaotic than smooth.

But unlike golf, creative work has no fairways, no greens, no carts, no flags. There are real tigers in those woods. You've got one life and no map.

Luckily, nobody is keeping score. Take all the mulligans you need.