Quantity over Quality

27 May 2015

In my most recent post I wrote about timing and putting myself on a regular schedule to keep my writing on track. I received this valuable feedback from a good friend:

I know you subscribe to the commit often philosophy for blogging but why is it necessary? Shouldn’t one speak only when they have something valuable to offer? You’re going to force yourself into writing sub-par content.

I’d like to respond to publicly as my response taps into a fundamental belief of mine.

Quantity over Quality

There’s a popular anecdote, that I find particularly appealing given my background as a potter, from the book Art & Fear:

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.

I find this idea of Quantity over Quality to be true for everything I have ever tried. When I teach, I encourage my students to make mistakes and start over quickly. A novice potter will learn more from messing up 10 pots than spending an hour on one. I know this to be true because I have seen it happen. (And since they’re beginners that one pot will still probably suck, which is how it should be).

I see the efficacy of quantity in my own work as well. My current commitment to draw every day means I often produce crap work, but I have also discovered really cool patterns and effects from this forced experimentation. If I was waiting till I had something valuable to draw I would never make anything, and I certainly wouldn’t have stumbled across some of my coolest work.

To answer the initial question, I am committed to writing more because focusing on quantity relieves the internal pressure to write perfectly. I will never be satisfied with the quality of my writing (or probably anything), and if I waited till I had something valuable to write I would never write. I’m ok writing sub-par content sometimes if that means I occasionally write excellent content. But if I can’t abide the churn of getting to great I will never arrive.

Quantity over Quality. Get ‘er done.