Last week I wrote about how an unconventional approach by a film photography professor resulted in a counter-intuitive discovery on the idea of perfection. This week, I’d like to revisit the story with an emphasis on quality and quantity in art and creative exploits. In case you missed last week’s post, I recommend you read it (here) before continuing, but to summarise the moral of the story, a film professor found that when he divided his class into two groups, a quantity group whose individuals would be graded on the number of photos taken and a quality group whose individuals would be graded on the quality of a single photo, he found that the individuals in the quantity group produced the best images, which suggests that the approach of focusing on the quantity of output leads to greater quality work, compared to a focus on quality.
This is counter-intuitive, as we’ve established. Conventional wisdom tends to advocate for quality over quantity, and it makes sense in many respects, especially when it comes to material possessions. For instance, it is often viewed as more sustainable to own a few high-quality items of clothing (shoes, bags, dresses), tech gadgets (phones, tablets, smartwatches), and capital assets (houses, cars, guitars) than it is to own a dozen mediocre ones. Similarly, it seems more reasonable to cultivate a handful of high-quality, deep and meaningful friendships and relationships than to have superficial relationships with many more acquaintances.
There are many more facets of life where the quality-over-quantity maxim holds up, which is why it seems counter-intuitive to suggest that we should pursue the opposite when it comes to creativity. If there’s only one thing you take from this post, it should be the idea that the pursuit of quantity (when done right) eventually leads to quality, but the pursuit of quality for its own sake may lead to a dead end. In other words, if quality is the destination, then quantity is the path.
There are a host of reasons why this is the case. For one thing, the pursuit of quantity frees you from the shackles of perfection and enables you to do the thing, as opposed to the pursuit of quality which might cripple you and keep you stuck in an endless loop of theorising and planning and preparing, without actually taking action.
Furthermore, the act of engaging in this doing practice in pursuit of quantity reinforces your identity as a doer, which creates a virtuous cycle that benefits you. If that’s not enough reason, it also allows for the sort of serendipitous discovery that exposes you to ideas, techniques and practices you can act on because, as stated earlier, you're no longer bogged down by the idea of perfection.
Examples of these principles in action are all around us. There are countless conversations with musicians and writers where they often talk about writing as often as possible to get their creative juices flowing. Some artists liken their creativity to a tap which, when turned on, lets out dirty water at first. As the faucet continues to run, the slush and dirt are washed out and there’s nothing but crystal-clear water left to enjoy. In this analogy, the first few works of art represent the slush and dirt and muddy water. The first X songs, or paintings, or novels won’t be an artist’s best work. X may be 2 or 20 or 200, or any number in-between, but eventually, good songs and paintings and novels will come forth. It’s just a matter of letting the bad water flow out first so that the good water can follow. Another way to say this is that a lot (i.e. a large quantity) of bad art needs to be made in order for the good (i.e. high quality) art to be made.
It is worth noting that this process isn’t predictable and straightforward. It is difficult, maybe even impossible to put timestamps on it, but this is exactly what the mainstream media does, much to everyone’s detriment. We’re often sold neat fairytales of everyday people going viral and becoming overnight successes, and this colours our expectations of the process and warps our sense of time. When these success stories hit the mainstream outlets, they fail to show all the hard work spanning several years that got the artist to that position where they were primed to act on the opportunity to become the so-called overnight success.
A few months ago I wrote about the montage sequences you’ll often find in sports or martial arts movies, where a few selected clips are cut together with inspirational music to paint a picture of monumental progress over a span of a few seconds. Of course, we know this couldn’t be further from reality, but it warps our expectations nonetheless. The reality is far less interesting. For instance, on an episode of the Writing Excuses podcast, writer and martial arts expert Wesley Chu once cited how, at the start of his martial arts training, his master tasked him with walking around in a circle, and that was all he did for a month. Of course, this sort of thing doesn’t make for scintillating viewing, so you’re unlikely to see it in the next martial arts movie you watch. We need to recalibrate our expectations when it comes to making progress and getting better at our chosen creative exploits. It takes a lot of time and effort to produce good work. The process of putting in this time and effort yields a large quantity of work, which we need to create, to get to the good, high-quality work.
As I emphasised last week, this call for quantity over quality isn't a license to forego diligence and excellence in the creative practice. You want to give your best always, you want to do as good a job as you can, but only up to the point where the standards you aspire to don't cripple you and stop you from doing anything. In other words, if you find yourself endlessly planning and preparing to do something because of the standards you've set, rather than actually doing the thing, then your standards may be too high. If that’s not enough to convince you, consider that high standards are no use if there are no results to evaluate or judge them by.
PS: Just a reminder that my latest single, Feels Like Rain is out now, everywhere. You can listen to it on several platforms. Please share it with a friend, share it with your social networks, and consider subscribing to the newsletter (below), my YouTube channel, or wherever else you listen to music.