How To Create A Quantity Of Work Without Sacrificing Quality
3-Steps To Making Beautiful Drawings, Writing, or Music
Most people think you have to sacrifice quality for quantity or quantity for quality.
You don’t.
In fact, you can have both.
Tiago Forte, author of best-seller “Building a Second Brain” tells a story of how his Dad taught him how to optimize for both quantity and quality writing.
Here’s how it works:
1. First, focus on quality.
If you are drawing a pineapple. Focus on drawing the best dang pineapple you can. Go for quality.
Then, when you find yourself stuck or sense you are off track, grab another piece of paper and shift your focus to quantity.
2. Second, whift to quantity when you get stuck.
A quantity of work give you the reps you the reps to get better at any skill. Do enough of 1 thing and you will get better at that thing.
Continuing with our example:
Draw 100 pineapples.
This will teach you what makes a quality piece.
Next distill the lessons from your quantity exercise.
3. Finally, return to quality once you’ve learned your lesson.
And then go back to your original work to apply the lessons you learned.
This is how you improve.
And this is how you leverage both quantity and quality in your work.
If you want to hear Tiago tell his story, you can find it on the How I Write podcast here:
