Quantity vs Quality

There was a brilliant ceramic class teacher. One day out of the blue, he decided to change the term evaluation system by dividing his class into two groups.

One group gets evaluated based on the quality measured by one final piece. The other group will be graded based on the quantity represented by their work's total weight in kilograms.

For example, if student A produced 70KG worth of work, and student B only has 60KG, student A will get a higher grade.

Interestingly, when the term came to an end, the teacher found all the exceptional work are produced by the latter group, which focused only on the quantity instead of quality - the more, the better.

The second group just kept on practising their craft day in and day out, and they didn't have time to think about the quality of their work, they just kept their heads down and kept working. They couldn't afford to do a month-long paper sketching or planning, as those tasks won't matter to their final score; quantity is the only priority. Rather than planning and perfecting, they just keep working! In the end, they got the last laugh.

So how come the people who didn't focus on quality end up with more quality work?

The answer is simple. Quality comes from quantity, or in other words, quantity is a perquisition of quality. It is not a chicken and egg problem; it is a horse and car problem.

Many years ago, I was in a workshop with a dozen senior executives from a public company. The goal of the workshop is to generate quality ideas for their digital transformation programme. As the facilitator, I instructed everyone to write down 20 ideas they can think of to drive the agenda forward.

After about 10 mins, I informed the group I need 20 more from them, and after that 20 more, then 20 more again, and then 20 more again. The last 20 ideas took the group three to four times longer than the first 20 ideas.

In less than a day, we have generated a total of 600 ideas. After further iterations, we narrowed down to only two promising ideas which are worth pursuing. To get a great idea, you need to have a lot of useless ones first.

Picasso is thought to have made about 50,000 artworks during his lifetime; however, only a handful is well known. If it takes talents like Picasso 50,000 attempts to make a few spectacular paintings, there is no reason for us to complain about our failures after merely three attempts.

It is fair to say, without the drastic quantity Picasso produced during his lifetime, he probably won't be recognised as one of the most iconic artists in his generation.

The more you do, the better you become, the higher quality of your work will be.

Do not let the pursuit of perfection stop you from getting better.

Perfection is an anomaly. Pursuit the imperfection instead.

Stop speculating, and just keep fucking working!