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| We can't get good unless we get going -VisualizeValue |
I fell into a classic writer trap. I started off publishing blog posts very frequently - short ones, 2 or 3 times a week. But after a few months of doing that, I felt my regular posts lacked depth or novelty to attract an audience and that I should focus on more quality writing than quantity. Well, that's harder to do and as a result, I stopped publishing frequently.
The path to quality is often quantity. To become a better and quicker writer, you should aim to write frequently, rather than aiming to write a handful of high quality pieces. Regular reps improve your clarity, speed, and quality. I feel it and I know it. Aiming for just great essays can become the enemy of regular repetition and daily improvement.
I think this applies to skills and habits beyond writing too. Doing something regularly and thoughtfully is a better strategy to learning and improvement, than starting (and getting stuck) with long and hard projects.
There's a popular parable that drives home the point (source).
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."
The path to quality is often quantity. To become a better and quicker writer, you should aim to write frequently, rather than aiming to write a handful of high quality pieces. Regular reps improve your clarity, speed, and quality. I feel it and I know it. Aiming for just great essays can become the enemy of regular repetition and daily improvement.
I think this applies to skills and habits beyond writing too. Doing something regularly and thoughtfully is a better strategy to learning and improvement, than starting (and getting stuck) with long and hard projects.
There's a popular parable that drives home the point (source).
"A 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."