The phrase "a mere step" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to indicate that something is a small or insignificant action or progress in a larger context.
Example: "Completing this task is just a mere step towards achieving our ultimate goal."
Alternatives: "a small step" or "a simple step".
Dance itself can readily be reduced to a mere step, since after all it is only the act of dancing that is essential.
It's so easy to say, "Yes, I accept your apology," but that could be just a mere step away from saying, "Yes, I accept you".
Judges are increasingly acknowledging that class-action certification, designed to be a mere step in the litigation process, all too often puts defendants under unbearable pressure to settle, even when they have a reasonable chance of winning on merit.
Or there's the capital Geneva, a mere step behind Zurich in the lifestyle stakes, which has a competitive property market and is a global financial hub that demands accommodation for its discerning long-term tenants.
"My cynicism had reached such depths that I regarded those horrors" — the wartime camps, and the killings that came afterward — "as a mere step toward the great, ubiquitous, universal crime, Death, the premise of all our lives," he writes.
His age regarded letter writing as an art on which could be expended the literary care appropriate to the essay or to fiction, and, for Richardson, the creation of epistolary novels entailed a mere step from the actual world into that of the imagination.
For example, the mere step of recruitment in a trial or social interaction among trial participants can change the baseline conditions and therefore affect the interpretation of therapeutic outcomes.
As Lurleen tells it, an act of violence is in the grand scheme of things -- a "swing of a pendulum as it oscillated between destruction and creativity," a mere baby step in the perpetual realignment of the forces of good and evil in the world.
While authorities agree that the Justice Department's decision is significant, it is a mere first step on the road toward legalizing casino gambling in cyberspace.
Thus, "wisdom work" is the best way to convey a skill set that will not be a mere incremental step beyond knowledge work, but the next evolution of the human worker.
We do need an equation (a learning curve) for extrapolation, but this requires extrapolating a mere one step ahead.
