Quantity over Quality
When contemplating putting work out there for the first time, I realized that it wouldn’t be “good enough”. It’s easy to be a sofa critic, and I recognize when something is good or great, but I simply don’t have the skills to create work of that standard yet. So, why should I even start? If there are people out there creating at a much higher quality than me, then what’s the point in trying?
These questions are always in the back of my mind, especially when I decide to create something. It’s part of the “Resistance” mentioned in the War of Art by Steven Pressfield and plays a big role in procrastination. The way to get over this issue is to try and see things differently. The people making these amazing pieces of work have been at it for many years and we only see the final product, not the years of commitment and dedication they’ve given to their craft. I mean, Morgan Freeman landed his first lead role at the age of fifty.
This is the idea behind Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work. He speaks about acting on that feeling to create without worrying about the outcome. Being held back by the lack of quality in your work means the quality may never come. He emphasises that you don’t have to be a genius to attempt something and the process ends up being more important than the product. Sharing our methods and how we’ve gotten to where we are maybe interesting to more people than we think. People are interested in the process, and sharing your journey makes you relatable. I’ve always been curious about how people end up in certain professions and what it took to get there. There’s always some form of interest and it tends to be that the more niche the vocation, the more devout the following/interest.
Kleon suggests teaching what we know, which is what I’m attempting to do in these posts. Writing down and passing on something I’ve just learned is a great way for me to really understand a topic. I wouldn’t call myself a teacher, but rather a matchmaker between one and possible new students. Kleon stresses the importance of “sticking around” and learning to take a punch- dealing with the push back against anything you put out there is important, to realise that it doesn’t hurt as bad as you imagined, leading to thicker skin. Sticking around is about committing to the quantity of work, showing up and getting it done even when we don’t feel like it.
We must get the bad pieces of work out for the quality to appear. Through the quantity comes the quality, and this point is emphasized in the book Art & Fear by David Bayles:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
This parable makes so much sense and yet I struggle to actually apply the principle behind it. I’ve found that the best way to do so, to ensure I stick around, is by giving myself a deadline. Hence, the weekly blog posts. When creating the first lightbulb Thomas Edison made it clear that sticking around would achieve results by saying:
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Quality isn’t a by-product of quantity, but rather an outcome of it. What I mean by that is, conscious improvement needs to take place while meeting my quantity quota. I can’t just mindlessly churn out work and expect to get better just because I’m doing so. I’ve got to think of it as a gym workout. If I were to pick up the lightest weights I could find, and simply do the number of reps necessary to complete the workout, would I see any results? No, I must do the reps with a weight that challenges me, I need to be struggling on those final reps to see results. If the exercise becomes too easy then I need to pick up heavier weights and start again.
This can be applied to anything I want to improve at. If I feel myself getting complacent and coasting through, I need to pick up some heavier weights to challenge myself. Committing to the quantity is the hard part, but once I’ve done that, I need to commit to the quality too.
